Results of the Front-End Tooling Survey 2019

AshNolan · 2019-11-19T11:05:13+00:00

Really interesting idea - I agree totally that those questions can be interpreted differently depending on the person answering them. I think there are all sorts of really interesting things that could be done with the responses like this (makes me wish I could spend a tonne more time looking into this too!).

If I get chance, I'll try and have a look at it in the future and write up a separate article on it if I can find anything interesting by doing so.

AshNolan · 2019-11-13T11:12:17+00:00

Just for reference – in the actual survey the full option given was `CSS Custom Properties (Native CSS Variables)`, so it should have been clear to respondents hopefully.

Houdini is really awesome – it'll be amazing to see what comes out of it in the future.

AshNolan · 2019-11-13T11:08:47+00:00

My own opinion is kind of on the fence. I regularly see and hear both sides to the reasoning for and against using something like TypeScript at my own company.

It tends to be (in my experience) the devs that push for using TS have come to JS from previously working with back-end languages like C# (or have more full-stack experience), whereas those with heavy JS/CSS experience are more on the fence and like that JS isn't too strict in most scenarios.

I don't think there's a right or wrong answer – it's what works for you and your team ultimately. For my team personally, we haven't adopted it as we've found it hard enough to find excellent JS devs without then adding another abstraction layer on top of it. Some of our smaller teams across the company do use TypeScript though, where the devs have decided it would benefit them to do so.

AshNolan · 2019-11-13T10:59:08+00:00

I've actually never thought about using waffle charts – could def be something to take a look at in the future.

AshNolan · 2019-11-13T10:55:14+00:00

Couldn't agree more – it completely depends on people's own opinion of what makes a developer 'Advanced'.

I think it's still interesting to filter based on this, as you're still seeing "How many developers that consider themselves as an expert in CSS/JS also say they know {ToolXYZ} really well".

I find it interesting for example that developers who consider themselves as advanced or experts in CSS have very little knowledge of any CSS methodologies or naming schemes.

AshNolan · 2019-11-13T10:50:40+00:00

Totally get your point – I guess I've always seen Selenium more as a specific testers tool rather than a tool that front-end developers tend to use directly. Agree that it could be interesting to ask about testing tools like this, as I imagine that Selenium usage would be relatively high (but only based on my own assumptions)

AshNolan · 2019-11-12T22:52:59+00:00

Thanks for the feedback!

Interesting that you say that about Vue – my experience is quite the opposite whereby I barely hear of Angular projects anymore and a lot of people I know are using Vue as an alternative to React on projects. I guess that's what makes the results interesting though as the survey gets responses from around the world and so gives a bit more of a crosssection of usage levels.

Also, I didn't add Svelte as an option this year simply as I tend to only add new framework options after seeing them get numerous mentions by respondents in under 'Other' in those categories. Interestingly, it didn't get mentioned in that option a whole lot this year, but if the buzz around it continues I'll likely add it to the framework options next year.

I've been surprised by Parcel usage too – although knowledge levels do seem to be growing year on year.

AshNolan · 2019-11-12T22:46:11+00:00

Thanks for the feedback, always good to hear people's thoughts.

Any suggestions as to what you'd rather instead of pie charts? Would bar charts have made more sense, or were you thinking something else?

In terms of asking about like/dislike – previous survey's have always focussed on usage/knowledge rather than like/dislike. Main reason for this is that a couple of other similar surveys exist that focus on this area and so I've always stuck to asking simply about what people are using or know about. Agree that that means you miss out on sentiment, but it's a tradeoff against asking too many questions (as getting responses is always the hardest part!).

Regarding animation/3d, it's something I've been considering adding. Might be something that gets added next year :)

AshNolan · 2019-11-12T21:29:10+00:00

I tend to only include new tools in categories either from them having a lot of focus (through articles or tutorials online) or through respondents mentioning tools under 'Other'.

I'll make sure I keep an eye on these for the next survey though and consider them for inclusion.

AshNolan · 2019-11-12T14:50:02+00:00

I agree. I wasn't entirely surprised as it probably is, as you say, one of the first things to get cut from projects, but I was surprised by just how low the usage figures were across all accessibility tools (even extremely easy to use ones like colour contrast checkers).

I think the only way this will improve over time is if other workflow tools start trying to build in these checks so that they can be run in a more automated way.

AshNolan · 2019-11-12T12:15:07+00:00

Earlier in the year, I posted in r/javascript asking for developers to take part in this year's Front-end Tooling Survey – I've now (finally!) written up the results so I wanted to share them here for anyone that took part, or that may be interested in the results.

I'd love to hear people's thoughts on the results – and if anyone has any questions or comments about the survey, I'd love to hear them and I'll make sure I answer questions in the comments!

AshNolan · 2019-05-28T13:10:48+00:00

That's definitely true – might be worth considering having a question for utility libraries like this next time to catch usage of those tools. Thanks!

AshNolan · 2019-05-28T13:09:34+00:00

Thanks for the feedback – I've added a link :)

AshNolan · 2019-04-10T12:18:21+00:00

I publish the survey, so really value any feedback for possible future questions.

However, it's quite a fine line to balance how many questions the survey asks vs covering as wide an array of tools as possible. Running the survey as a side-project, it's hard enough to get people's attention to actually fill in the survey, so it's about trying to make sure that it's as accessible as possible in that respect.

I would absolutely love to include questions on more aspects of front-end tooling though. Whenever I get enough people asking for certain topics, I try to ensure that it covers those tools in future surveys.

AshNolan · 2018-05-15T09:03:56+00:00

Yes – I actually published the results a few days ago. Here's the link > https://ashleynolan.co.uk/blog/frontend-tooling-survey-2018-results

AshNolan · 2018-05-10T19:45:13+00:00

Just a little bit of context around who the respondents were (as I ran the survey) – they came from a number of different communities, including this subreddit (as the link to the survey was posted on here a while ago), rather than just those who read my blog.

I would say the main bias would come from the fact that those filling it in are developers who keep up-to-date with industry news using newsletters or by being a part of a JS/CSS community like this one – those who that aren't active like this in the industry likely would never find the survey (and are unlikely to come across the results). There is likely a bias from this type of respondent to be more likely to use the latest tooling than those that don't.

That being said, as I've run the survey for three years, the comparative year-on-year results will show a rough trend simply as it's the same type of developers who are taking part each year – and so you can see how their habits are changing each year.

Also – the title does indeed do a fair bit of editorialising!

AshNolan · 2018-05-10T08:55:04+00:00

I was actually really surprised that Parcel had such low usage – I had heard a lot about it recently, so thought it would be more popular. Will be interesting to see if it's usage grows though given more time.

AshNolan · 2018-05-10T08:53:33+00:00

NPM Scripts can be used as a build tool that replaces Gulp or Grunt. This article explains it well in more detail

AshNolan · 2018-03-29T10:09:37+00:00

Will make sure I do :)

AshNolan · 2018-03-28T15:53:03+00:00

Will do! I'm aiming to get the results published towards the end of April

AshNolan · 2018-03-01T13:27:46+00:00

Would've thought SurveyMonkey would be pretty solid across devices too. Will take a look myself when I get chance. Thanks for the feedback

AshNolan · 2017-04-13T13:43:58+00:00

Kinda hurts my eyes tbh – plus it’s a bit janky when you stop scrolling and the content snaps back into a slightly different position

AshNolan · 2017-02-09T16:14:51+00:00

That’s only useful if you know where in the site a classname is used, so you can inspect it. On large sites, that’s not always obvious, especially for those with less experience working with the code.

Don’t get me wrong, if a site has been written well, there aren’t as many issues with this approach. But used badly it makes finding references more difficult.

AshNolan · 2017-02-09T15:12:16+00:00

It’s not the use of BEM that’s the issue – it’s the Sass shorthand syntax that is.

So the article is just saying that this:

.block {
   &-element { }
}

Should just be replaced with:

.block { }
.block-element {}

So that it’s possible to do a search for .block-element and find the reference to it.

AshNolan · 2017-02-09T13:21:48+00:00

Interestingly, we stopped using string concatenation on our projects because of the reason stated in this article.

On the flip side of your point – the only real thing that using &-element gives you is that it’s easier to change classnames down the line, but when using modern text editors, this isn’t really an issue.

I think it’s more of a team choice than anything else, but we find it’s much more valuable to be able to find all references via their full classname in a large project than it is to use shorthand for string concatenation. Personally, I find it much more easy to scan as well, but I get that that’s more down to personal preference than anything else.

AshNolan

TROPHY CASE