Reflections on The 2021 StackOverflow Survey

August 3, 2021 by Faisal Alghurayri

2021 StackOverflow Developer Survey

2021 StackOverflow Developer Survey

The yearly 2021 StackOverflow survey is out!

As always, a beautiful and well-designed report.

The highlights for me:

🔗   The year of sabbaticals

“76% of professional developers are employed at least part-time. Last year over 92% of professional developers were employed at least part-time. No significant increase in the percent of developers looking for work.”

Hey mom, I’m on TV!

In other news, the percentage of freelancers has increased too.

🔗   I think that React has reached a local maximum

“This year, React surpassed jQuery as the most commonly used web framework.”

Usually, when a tech reaches its maximum adoption, people start to realize the local maximum and start trying to change the status quo.

In other news, Svelte is the most loved web framework!

🔗   Functional programming languages are the top-paid technology

Clojure, F#, Elixir, and Erlang are the top-paid languages.

At the same time, they have the least % of adoption.

🔗   DB technologies have the most love/hate relationship.

Redis, PostgreSQL, and MySQL continue to be the leaders in adoption and love.

Surprisingly, MongoDB is high on the list of love and want. I think maybe this is because it is one of the most approachable DBs for JS developers. Not sure about the longevity in a production system, though.

There is no sign for neo4j or any other graph DBs.

🔗   Well-designed tech stands the time test

Git’s 93% and Docker’s 49% of love and adoption got me thinking about what other tech pains need similarly well-engineered solutions that can stand the test of time so we can focus on shipping valuer rather than trying to solve the same problem again with different tools.

Take it easy,

~Faisal