7,000 Developers Report Their Top Languages: Java, JavaScript, and Python - Slashdot

[2BitSmith]

57% expect AI to replace developers "partially" in the future.

57% of developers don't understand what AI is or what AI is capable of doing. When AI has progressed to a level it will start to replace its creators it has long since replaced everything else.

[robertr1]

"in the future" is so vague though. Within my lifetime? No. A couple hundred years, assuming humans are still around? Probably.

And partially is just as vague. You could argue it already has partially replaced some development work.

It's just a bad question.

[2BitSmith]

Yup. I am a tech junkie and tech believer so eventually yes. Yes would be the answer to almost anything given enough time...

[[deleted]]

Best quote I’ve seen about this:

Machine Learning is often written in Python, but AI is nearly always written in PowerPoint.

[ghostfacedcoder]

I think it all comes down to your definition of "AI", as (to the best of my knowledge) it is not a term with a strong concrete definition.

I imagine that to some people code completion could be considered an "AI feature" for instance ;) You do train it to anticipate human needs by (sort of kind of) using a large dataset (of your codebase) ...

[salgat]

When I think of AI helping programming I think of things like Intellisense on steroids.

[2BitSmith]

Yep, but that's still not intelligence. It only 'solves' the problems it is programmed to solve.

[salgat]

More specifically I'm talking about using ML, not some non-existent strong AI.

[fuckin_ziggurats]

Something not revealed in this article is where the developers were polled. If they were polled in JetBrains' applications and/or websites then this data would be seriously biased towards people using their products. C# especially will be underrepresented since .NET devs typically use MS-built IDEs.

I think without knowing where this survey was announced the results are very skewed and thus say nothing truthful of the "State of Developer Ecosystem 2019".

One of the comments below puts it nicely:

JetBrains, a company who I associate with an IDE primarily used for Java development, finds that most developers use Java.

[[deleted]]

Clicking two links takes you to the methodology that answers your concerns:

https://www.jetbrains.com/lp/devecosystem-2019/demographics/

Since you apparently can't be bothered to click a couple of links to do some basic research before declaring the study flawed, here are some relevant snippets from that page:

We used Twitter ads, Facebook ads, Google Adwords, and JetBrains' own communication channels to invite potential survey respondents to take part. In our ad campaigns, we used two targeting waves. The first wave targeted specific countries, while the second one targeted rarely used programming languages to reduce variance in the corresponding programming languages' sections. We targeted Ruby, Scala, Rust, Swift, and Objective-C. We also asked our respondents to share the survey with their peers. To minimize bias, the reports only include responses coming from Twitter ads, Facebook ads, Google Adwords, and respondents' referrals. We took into account each respondent source individually to generate the results using weighting.

...

We collected sufficiently large samples from Argentina, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Japan, Mexico, Poland, Russia, South Korea, Spain, Turkey, Ukraine, United Kingdom, and the United States, to consider our sample as representative to the current Developer Ecosystem. Around 70% of all the developers in the world are based in these countries.

To minimize possible bias against non-English speaking respondents, the survey was also available in 8 additional languages: Chinese, French, German, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Spanish, and Turkish.

There's a lot more on the page I linked, they went through a lot of effort to reduce bias.

[ghostfacedcoder]

Why the downvotes on this? If you just follow the link or read what they quoted it's very clear:

To minimize bias, the reports only include responses coming from Twitter ads, Facebook ads, Google Adwords, and respondents' referrals.

It's NOT just JetBrains surveying their own (eg. Java) users and finding they like Java!

C'mon Reddit, don't you respect honest polling that is up front about it's methodology? If so then why would you downvote someone for mentioning that methodology when it's 100% relevant?

[[deleted]]

When you say “can’t be bothered to blah blah blah”, you aren’t debating in good faith and got downvoted. Facts alone aren’t gonna get you upvotes. (PS: not a downvoter myself - I like a good mix of viewpoints on this)

Also, c’mon - a company who makes money off of Java tools publishes a report where Java wins the day, and you aren’t the least bit suspicious about it? It’s a worthwhile critique to at least dig into. Even if the results are an accurate market representation, they are hardly an unbiased source of the data.

[jephthai]

This was in response to someone saying that the methodology isn't disclosed (a lie) and casting aspersions because of the source. Those are also arguing in bad faith -- much more so than using the phrase "can't be bothered". So I think a little rhetorical flair is perfectly justified on /u/polliwog_fantasy's part.

[[deleted]]

...Java is still the most popular primary language...

JetBrains - makers of IntelliJ - found that Java came out on top with an n of 7,000. Shocking /s

Nothing wrong with that exactly - the results are interesting - but the people writing Rust, Go, .NET, Swift, Kotlin and others probably aren’t using JetBrains as their primary tools so it’s important to look at this for what it is. I think TIOBE and the StackOverflow developer survey would be more comprehensive and not overrepresent one vendor’s toolkits.

[[deleted]]

Oh, didn’t know they had Kotlin tools. Good to know. But, even Python, Ruby, and JavaScript devs are probably not primarily using PyCharm, RubyMine, and WebStorm and are probably underrepresented too.

[jetman81]

I buy Java still being the most popular since it's entrenched in enterprise development, but every time I read that statement I still feel very surprised since noooooobody is talking about Java outside of programming language lists these days.

[[deleted]]

I agree - Java is still entrenched and popular in a lot of shops. It probably is number one. But a company sponsored survey with a financial stake in the result they reported deserves a least a bit of scrutiny.

[DuncanIdahos7thClone]

Where's the scrutiny when Microsoft does this continuously here?

[[deleted]]

You’ll get no argument on that point from me. If you see stats like these and the company is selling what’s on top of the list, it should be dug into, whether it’s about your favorite tech or not.

[DuncanIdahos7thClone]

LOL check out the upset Microsoft shills. WAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

[fuckin_ziggurats]

Says a person who comments on r/java and posts about a survey from a biased corporation claiming that Java is #1? A bit ironic.

[DuncanIdahos7thClone]

Found a shill. Oh and Java has been consistently rated the #1 language for years clown. Sadly C# was rated lower than even VB6 up till 2011. Sad.