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2015Developer Survey

Overview

Developer Profile

Technology

Work

Community

Back to top

Get a better job

26,086 people from 157 countries participated in our 45-question survey. 6,800 identified as full-stack

developers, 1,900 as mobile developers, 1,200 as front-end developers, 2 as farmers, and 12,000 as

Overview

Every year we run a survey. This year, more developers answered more questions than ever

before.

something else.

Code is everywhere, and just about every coder uses Stack Overflow. Every day more coders are finding

great jobs on Stack Overflow Careers.

We conducted this survey to help us better understand our community and to help our community better

understand itself. For 2 weeks in early February we ran ads for the survey on Stack Overflow, posted it on

Meta Stack Overflow, and shared it across social media.

These results are not unbiased. Like the results of any survey, they are skewed by selection bias, language

bias, and probably a few other biases. So take this for what it is: the most comprehensive developer

survey ever conducted. Or at least the only one that asks devs about tabs vs. spaces.

See the link in the footer to download the full data set.

I .G E O G R A P H Y

Developer Profile

Who codes? Where do developers live? Are developers programmers and are programmers

developers? Let's talk demographics.

There are now more than 7.2 billion people on planet Earth. About 32 million of them visit Stack Overflow

monthly, and more than 25 million are return visitors. Return visitors land on Stack Overflow an average of

6 times every month. These are our Active Users in the map above.

This survey under represents developers who don't like to take English surveys. It's biased against devs in

countries like China, Brazil, and Japan, who participate on Stack Overflow less than devs in other non-

English speaking countries. It's for these devs that we've started to launch

Overflow. Wherever you live, whatever language you speak, we want to help you build as efficiently and

collaboratively as humanly possible.

I I . D E V S P E RC A P I T A

Respondents Active Users World Population

+-

60+

51-60

40-50

Accounting for 25% of all sessions, the United States is the top traffic source to Stack Overflow. India is

second (12.5%), followed by the UK (5.5%), and Germany (4.2%). But Luxembourg delivers more uniques

per capita than any other country.

I I I .A G E

Top 6 Bottom 6

Country Devs per 1,000 people

Luxembourg 39.8

Iceland 35.0

Sweden 35.0

Israel 33.4

Finland 33.0

Singapore 31.7

With devs defined as return users. Among countries with at least

10,000 monthly Stack Overflow sessions.

0.5%

1.9%

7.6%

35-39

30-34

25-29

20-24

< 20

At the time of this writing, the average developer is 28.9 years old

as IBM manufactured the first megabit chip.

I V . A G E B YC O U N T R Y

9.1%

8.8%

25,831 responses

Country Developer Age (avg.)

United States 31.6

United Kingdom 30.3

Canada 30.3

France 28.6

Germany 29.0

Poland 26.7

Russia 26.6

India 25.0

Male

Female

Prefer not to disclose

Other

11+ years

Programmers are especially young in developing countries like India, where the average developer is just

25 years old.

V .G E N D E R

Software development has a gender balance problem. Our internal stats suggest the imbalance isn't quite

as severe as the survey results would make it seem, but there's no doubt everyone who codes needs to be

more proactive welcoming women into the field.

V I .E X P E R I E N C E

Among countries with at least 10 mil population

5.8%

1.7%

0.5%

25,744 responses

6-10 years

2-5 years

1-2 years

Less than 1 year

11+ years

6-10 years

2-5 years

Less than 2 years

The programming field is growing extremely rapidly. In the United States, nearly 40% of doctors have 10+

years of professional experience. By contrast, only about 25% of developers worldwide have more than 10

years coding experience. Most of those veteran developers have probably been coding

much shorter than that.

V I I . W O M E N W H OC O D E

Compared with men, women who code are nearly twice as likely to have less than 2 years programming

experience. We hope this means more women are joining the industry and closing the gender gap.

13.6%

6.6%

24,827 responses

Women Men

9.5%

I'm self-taught

Bachelor of Science inComputer Science (or related

field)On-the-job training

Masters degree in ComputerScience (or related field)

Online class

Some university courseworkin computer science (or

related field) but no degreeIndustry certification program

Other

Intensive code "boot-camp"or night school

V I I I .E D U C A T I O N

F E M A L E R E S P O N D E N T S B Y G E O G R A P H Y

India

US

Sweden

4.8%

2.3%

Developers in India are 3-times more likely to be female than developers in the United States.

6.1%

4.3%

3.5%

PhD in Computer Science (orrelated field)

Mentorship program

20+ hours per week

10-20 hours per week

5-10 hours per week

2-5 hours per week

1-2 hours per week

None

There are many ways to learn how to code.

science. 33% of respondents never took a computer science university course. System administrators are

most likely to be self-taught (52%). Enterprise level services developers are most likely to have an industry

certification (13%). Machine learning developers and data scientists are 10 times more likely than any other

developer type to have a PhD (15%).

I X . S I D E P R O J E C T S A N D O P E NS O U R C E

For many developers, programming is a labor of love. 70% of respondents reported that they spend 2 or

more hours per week programming either as a hobby or working on open source software. 20% of

respondents spend more than 10 hours programming away from work.

2.2%

1.0%

21,314 responses

9.5%

12.4%

8.3%

16,522 responses

Javascript

SQL

Java

C#

PHP

Python

C++

more than 7 hours per week coding on the side.

I . M O S T P O P U L A RT E C H N O L O G I E S

Technology

The more things change, the more likely it is those things are written in JavaScript with

NotePad++ on a Windows machine (theme: dark) using Git, and tabs instead of spaces.

2015 2014 2013

C

Node.js

AngularJS

Ruby

Objective-C

Swift

C++11

Rust

Go

Clojure

Scala

JavaScript remains the most-used programming language. Node.js and AngularJS are busting out. Java is

still the #1 server side language (and the most frequently used

hold on strong.

I I . M O S T L O V E D , D R E A D E D , A N DW A N T E D

13.3%

13.3%

8.0%

7.8%

21,982 responses

Most Loved Most Dreaded Most Wanted

F#

Haskell

C#

Python

Windows 7

Mac OS X

Linux

Windows 8

Windows XP

Windows Vista

Other

We asked respondents what programming languages and technologies they've developed with over the

past year and what languages and technologies they want to develop with. By comparing status quo vs.

aspiration we can see how developers perceive available programming tools.

I I I . D E S K T O P O P E R A T I N GS Y S T E M

% of devs who are developing with the language or tech that have expressed interest in continuing to develop with it.

2015 2014 2013

1.0%

0.2%

3.5%

For the third year in a row, we asked respondents which operating system they use the most. Windows

maintains the lion's share of the developer operating system market, while Mac appears to have overtaken

the Linuxes among active Stack Overflow devs.

Linux may be a small player on the consumer market, with just 1.5% of global desktop operating system

share, but it's a go-to OS for developers.

I V . T E X TE D I T O R

22,771 responses

T H E L I N U X E S - D E V S H A R E 2 0 1 5

Ubuntu

Debian

Mint

Fedora

Other

12.0%

2.2%

1.6%

1.3%

4.0%

4,667 responses

NotePad++

Sublime Text

Vim

Emacs

Atom.io

TextMate

Coda

XEmacs

Other

Developer type influences choice of text editor. Either that or Emacs turns people into mathematics-

focused developers. Data scientists and machine learning developers are about 3 times more likely to use

Emacs than any other type of developer.

3.8%

2.8%

1.4%

0.7%

0.3%

16,778 responses

P R E F E R R E D T E X T E D I T O R B Y O C C U P A T I O N

Occupation Preferred text editor

Desktop Developers NotePad++

Front-end web developers Sublime Text

DevOps & Sys admins Vim

Full-stack developers Notepad++ and Sublime Text

Dark

Light

I don't use an IDE

Git

SVN

TFS

Mercurial

CVS

V . I D ET H E M E

Developers prefer working with a dark IDE theme. We did a little further mining and discovered desktop

developers prefer a light theme, front-end developers prefer dark, and mobile developers are split down

the middle.

V I . S O U R C EC O N T R O L

Occupation Preferred text editor

7.7%

12.2%

7.9%

4.2%

Perforce

Other

I don't use source control

Tabs

Spaces

It depends

Huh?

Source control is an industry standard tool. However, fun fact: about 10% of developers still don't use it.

V I I . T A B S V S .S P A C E S

After millennia of heated debate, mercifully, at long last, we have an answer.

to spaces.

Upon closer examination of the data, a trend emerges: Developers increasingly prefer spaces as they gain

experience. Stack Overflow reputation correlates with a preference for spaces, too: users who have

10,000 rep or more prefer spaces to tabs at a ratio of 3 to 1.

3.3%

5.8%

9.3%

16,694 responses

4.5%

25,807 responses

V I I I .C A F F E I N E

Like most working humans, developers demand caffeine. The average developer drinks 2.2 servings of

coffee, tea, Surge, or other caffeinated beverage every day. Nordic devs drink much more coffee than

most.

Country Caffeinated beverages per day (avg.)

Norway 3.09

Netherlands 3.04

Sweden 2.94

Finland 2.76

Iran 2.74

Denmark 2.70

South Africa 2.59

United Kingdom 2.54

Turkey 2.50

Germany 2.44

16,516 responses

W H I C H D E V E L O P E R T Y P E S D R I N K T H E M O S T C O F F E E ?

I .O C C U P A T I O N

Occupation

Product manager

Executive (VP of Eng., CTO, CIO, etc.)

Business intelligence or data warehousing expert

System administrator

Growth hacker

Work

The labor landscape is constantly evolving for those who know how to code. New developer

types are emerging. More developers are going remote (and getting better, higher-paying

jobs because of it). More than most professions, developers enjoy what they do, and it

shows: nearly every developer spends time coding on the side.

2015 2014 2013

Full-stack web developer

Student

Back-end web developer

Mobile developer (all)

Desktop developer

Front-end web developer

Enterprise level servicesdeveloper

Embedded applicationdeveloper

Executive (VP of Eng., CTO,CIO, etc.)

System administrator

Database administrator

Mobile Developer - Android

Mobile Developer - iOS

We provided respondents with a list of 24 common developer types and asked them to choose the

occupation that best describes what they do. For the third year in a row, "full-stack developer" was the

most common response.

I I . M O B I L ED E V E L O P E R S

13.6%

10.1%

9.1%

8.3%

6.0%

2.9%

2.9%

1.8%

1.6%

0.6%

22,148 responses

Mobile developer

Mobile developer - WindowsPhone

Developer with a statistics ormathematics background

Data scientist

Machine learning developer

Of more than 22,000 respondents, 1,900 said they are primarily a mobile developer.

outnumber iOS developers 4 to 3. Just over 2% of mobile developers identify as Windows Phone

developers. 20% of mobile developers don't identify with a particular mobile platform.

I I I . M A T H E M A T I C SD E V E L O P E R S

We've been able to identify a number of emerging developer types by observing patterns in Stack Overflow

users' browsing behavior. Developers with a stats and math background and machine learning developers

are a couple of these new dev types. Data scientist is a related developer type that is slightly more

established.

I V . O T H E R D E VT Y P E S

2.3%

1,900 responses

1,018 responses

DevOps

Business intelligence or datawarehousing expert

Graphics programmer

Quality Assurance

Product Manager

Designer

Database administrator

Growth hacker

The spectrum of developer types is vast, and it's often unclear where one type ends and another begins.

More than 300 respondents identified as DevOps, nearly 200 identified as business intelligence or data

warehousing experts, and 59 identified as "growth hacker" – the smallest segment of developers among

the multiple choice options.

"Other" developer types make the field even more interesting: nearly 1,600 respondents submitted a write-

in response for occupation. Game developers and designers made up the largest segment among write-in

dev types. More than 100 write-in respondents included multiple dev types in their occupation choice. Only

one respondent wrote in that he/she works with lasers.

V .I N D U S T R Y

Multiple Choice Write-in

1.5%

0.8%

0.7%

0.7%

0.7%

0.7%

0.5%

0.3%

Software Products

Web Services / Internet

Finance / Banking

Consulting

Media / Advertising /Entertainment and Gaming

Health / Biotech / Science

Education / Academia /Research

Telecommunications

Government

Other

Respondents from developed countries are more likely than others to say they work in an industry outside

the traditional software powerhouses.

V I . C O M P E N S A T I O N B YT E C H N O L O G Y

Total Asia Eastern Europe

8%

7%

7%

5%

5%

4%

3%

16,160 responses

United States Western Europe

Objective-C

Node.js

C#

C++

SQL

C

Ruby

JavaScript

Java

Python

PHP

We asked respondents how much they earn in US dollars, including bonus. We cross tabulated

compensation with competency in specific technologies to see which tech pays best.

Niche or emerging technologies pay big bucks.

reflect a shortage of certain skills in the workforce – companies are willing to pay more when hiring for

cutting edge skillsets. It's also likely that developers with niche competencies are just better developers all

around.

19,483 responses

T O P P A Y I N G T E C H N O L O G I E S

V I I . C O M P E N S A T I O N B Y P U R C H A S I N GP O W E R

Cassandra

Spark

F#

Scala

Rust

Hadoop

Cloud (AWS, GAE, Azure, etc.)

Redis

Go

Clojure

13,110 responses from top 35 responding countries. Average salary calculated per country.

Country How many Big Macs can you buy?

Ukraine 21,825

South Africa 19,215

United States 18,712

Australia 17,802

Full-time remote

Part-time remote

When it comes to quality of life, dollars, Euros and Yen don't matter. Big Macs matter. The Economist's Big

Mac Index is a measure of purchasing power parity that can be used to compare the true value of

compensation between workers in different economies.

Where can an average developer eat the most (and live the best)? The survey says: Ukraine, where Big

Macs cost only about $1.20.

V I I I . C O M P E N S A T I O N B Y R E M O T ES T A T U S

Russia 17,571

United Kingdom 15,757

Israel 15,280

Canada 14,711

Ireland 14,661

New Zealand 14,042

China 13,803

Country How many Big Macs can you buy?

Among countries with at least 100 survey respondents. Based on

Total United States India Russia

Rarely remote

Never remote

10,000+

5,000 to 9,999

500 to 4,999

2 to 499

1

Remote work pays. Developers who work remotely full-time earn about 40% more than those who

never work remote. The disparity is more pronounced in developing countries.

I X . C O M P E N S A T I O N B Y S T A C K O V E R F L O WR E P

We always said participating on Stack Overflow is good for your career. Now we have proof.

In truth, we don't know that there's any causal link between reputation and compensation, but indulge us

for a moment. If rep equals money, you could get a 10% raise just by going from 1 to 100 rep

Overflow. If rep equals money, you would only reach average developer status once you earned between

200-499 rep. And you'd earn 135% average salary once you hit 10,000 rep. It may be a good time to

a bounty...

Average salaries calculated per country among respondents from top 35 responding countries.

% average salary by country. 13,224 respondents from top 35 responding countries.

Employed full-time

I'm a student

Freelance / Contractor

Employed part-time

Unemployed

Retired

Prefer not to disclose

Other

X . E M P L O Y M E N TS T A T U S

If you're a software developer, you probably have a job. 97.5% of workforce respondents are employed in

at least a part-time capacity.

And even if you work full-time, you probably code on the side.

spends more than 6 hours every week working on open source, side- or hobby projects.

developers spend nearly 3 times as many hours on hobby projects. Code is life for most devs, and for

many coding is a lifetime pursuit.

9.0%

4.2%

2.0%

0.3%

1.2%

1.1%

21,306 responses

T I M E S P E N T C O D I N G O N T H E S I D E

I love my job

I'm somewhat satisfied withmy job

I'm neither satisfied nordissatisfied with my job

I'm somewhat dissatisfiedwith my job

I hate my job

X I . J O BS A T I S F A C T I O N

We asked respondents how satisfied they are with their current job or jobs. 76% of developers report

being at least satisfied with their job, and 36% love their job. Developers are generally more fulfilled by

Employed full-time

I'm a student

Freelance / Contractor

Employed part-time

Unemployed

Retired

16,483 respondents

11.0%

9.7%

1.9%

16,174 responses

work than most employees.

And developers in Iran are more satisfied with their jobs than developers anywhere else.

Careers may not have any jobs available in Iran, but you can still move there and apply for one of our many

available remote jobs.

X I I . J O B S A T I S F A C T I O N B Y D E VT Y P E

J O B S A T I S F A C T I O N B Y G E O G R A P H Y

Country Average Satisfaction Score

Iran 3.78

Netherlands 3.69

Norway 3.68

Israel 3.63

Denmark 3.61

Switzerland 3.58

Highest satisfaction scores among countries with 100 or more respondents. Satisfactions

scores calculated as average of responses, with extra weight given to "I love my job."

Most Satisfying Least Satisfying

Executive (VP of Eng., CTO,CIO, etc.)

Machine learning developer

Mobile developer - iOS

Mobile developer

Developer with a statistics ormathematics background

Full-time Remote

Part-time Remote

I rarely work remote

Never

It feels good to be the boss. Executives are 16% more satisfied

average (3.36). Product managers are generally the least satisfied with their jobs.

X I I I . R E M O T EW O R K

29% of developers work at least part-time remote.

choosing to work from home and more companies are embracing the remote workplace. (

those companies.)

16,288 responses

10.4%

16,154 responses

It's non-negotiable

Very important

Somewhat important

Neutral - I don't mind workingin the office or remotely

Not important

X I V . W O R K I N G R E M O T E L Y - W H O W A N T SI T ?

Code is breaking down cubicle walls. 50% of developers say working remote is at least somewhat

important. Note to companies trying to hire: if your

your possible applicant pool in half. And you may be eliminating the most qualified developers from

consideration. Stack Overflow users with 5,000+ rep are twice more likely than other developers to say

"remote optional" is non-negotiable.

4.1%

10.8%

18,890 responses

Community

Without people, Stack Overflow is just a pile of pixels. It's thanks to the devs who answer,

upvote, edit, and ask that everyone benefits from the library of Q&A we've amassed since the

first question was asked in 2008. Reputation and gamification is just a tiny part of what

Always

Usually

Sometimes

Rarely

Never

Multiple times a day

I . V I S I TS A T I S F A C T I O N

Stack Overflow users have saved their fellow developers millions of hours of work.

respondents how often the answers they find are are helpful. 86% of respondents say answers are usually

or always helpful.

I I . V I S I TF R E Q U E N C Y

makes Stack Overflow work. Community is everything.

10.2%

13.1%

0.6%

0.2%

16,399 responses

Once a day

Once a week

Once a month

Very rarely

I have never been on StackOverflow. I just love taking

surveys.

10,000+

5,000 to 9,999

3,000 to 4,999

2,000 to 2,999

1,000 to 1,999

500 to 999

200 to 499

Two-thirds of respondents say they visit multiple times per day.

I I I .R E P U T A T I O N

9.9%

1.9%

1.9%

0.5%

16,519 responses

Respondents Active Users

5.1%

3.4%

3.6%

3.3%

6.3%

7.1%

6.9%

100 to 199

50 to 99

2 to 49

1

I don't have an account

Not sure

To get help for my job

Because I love to learn

To give help to others

To receive help on mypersonal projects

Because I can't do my jobwithout it

To communicate with otherslike me

We asked respondents how much Stack Overflow rep they have. (We double-checked responses vs.

actual rep for users who provided account info – our users are remarkably honest people.) Whereas

respondent rep distribution includes 100% of respondents, active user distribution includes only the ~5%

of Stack Overflow visitors who are ever signed-in.

I V . M O T I V A T I O N F O R U S I N G S T A C KO V E R F L O W

7.2%

5.7%

13.8%

8.9%

7.5%

24,764 responses

To demonstrate that I'm goodat what I do

To maintain an onlinepresence

I don't really use StackOverflow. I just take surveys.

It feels good to help aprogrammer in need

My answer will help lots ofpeople who have the same

problem in the futureI don't answer much (or at all),

but I want to answer more

I feel a sense of responsibilityto the developer community

It feels good to demonstratemy expertise

Demonstrating my expertisewill benefit me

I have no idea why I answerbut I do it anyway

I don't answer much (or at all),and I don't want to

We asked respondents why they use Stack Overflow, allowing for multiple answer selections.

half of respondents use Stack Overflow to help other developers.

here to get help for their job. 2 out of 3 developers say they are motivated by a passion for learning new

things.

V . W H Y D O Y O UA N S W E R ?

1.3%

16,397 responses

6.4%

4.4%

60% of survey respondents have provided an answer on Stack Overflow. What motivates answerers?

More than any other motivation, developers answer because it feels good to help a fellow developer

More than half of respondents answer to leave artifacts that will help many developers in the future. And

6% of Stack Overflow answerers don't know why they answer – they just do.

15,980 responses

Keep Stack Overflow flowing

Help fellow developers build by answering one of

questions

developers in the future.

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