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The survey we’ve all been waiting for. The 14th Annual Stack Overflow Developer Survey has collected and dissected the insights of over 65,000 developers from 185 countries, reporting on AI adoption trends, the tools and languages everyone is using, how today’s work environment is changing, and predictions for the future of programming.
And since our team LOVES this stuff, we decided to dive into it all for you, pulling out the key takeaways of this year, so you can focus more of your time on taking advantage of it all. Consider it your sparknotes for the current state of Web Dev.
Participants
The responses of 65,437 developers from 185 countries around the world were collected, with 48,019 providing salary information. These participants were primarily recruited through Stack Overflow’s channels, including onsite messaging, blog posts, and social media.
Top Countries USA - 18.9% Germany - 8.4% India - 7.2% UK - 5.5% Ukraine - 4.6%
Age Most developers (36.5%) were between 25 and 34 years old. 21.4% were between 18 and 24, indicating a solid stream of young talent in the coding community.
Technology
Top Used Tools With several handfuls of new technology options for developers to weigh in on this year, long-standing languages such as Javascript (62%), HTML/CSS (53%), and Python (51%) still remained top of the list as most-used for the second year in a row. In fact, Javascript has been the most popular language every year since the Survey’s inception in 2011.
However, Python came in on top as the most desired language this year with the most developers wanting to use the language in 2025. Rust also came in on top for the most admired language with a 83% score, reflecting the technology’s growing reputation for performance and reliability.
When it comes to databases, PostgreSQL became the most popular choice this year, used by 49% of developers — marking a significant improvement from its debut in the 2018 survey with 33%. MySQL came in second at 40.3% and SQLite in third at 33.1%.
Ironically, this year’s top web framework, Svelte (73%), was used by Stack Overflow for the very first time in building the 2024 Developer Survey Results site. Their team will also vouch for the tech as big fans.
Other popular tools among developers include Docker (53.9%), npm (49.6%), Pip (32.4%), Homebrew (22.3%), Make (20.8%), Vite (19.9%), and Kubernetes (19.4%)
Top Paying Tools Show us the money! These technologies sure do, reporting the highest median salary amongst developers.
Erlang - $100,636 Elixir - $96,000 Clojure - $95,541 Nim - $94,924 RB - $90,221 Perl - $90,000 Scala - $88,619 Apex - $82,500
AI Adoption
In not-so-shocking news, AI tools are becoming increasingly inherent in the development process.
76% of all respondents are currently or planning to use AI tools in their day-to-day practice. When it came to developers’ perception of how well AI can handle complex tasks, most developers reported “Good, but not great” (32.7%) and “bad” or “very poor” (43.2%) with just 3.3% praising it with a “Very well” rating
The promise of GenAI to speed up time-consuming tasks by delivering quick solutions hasn’t quite lived up to the hype among developers with 31% remaining skeptical and 23% stating a level of distrust in the tools available to offer accurate solutions.
Most Used AI Search & Developer Tools ChatGPT - 82.1% GitHub Copilot - 41.2% Google Gemini - 23.9% Bing AI - 15.8% Visual Studio Intellicode - 13.6% Claude - 8.1% Codeium - 6.1% WolframAlpha - 5.6% Perplexity AI - 5.3%
Top Benefits of AI Tools The primary benefits of AI tools within development are not too shocking either, with participants sharing “Increasing productivity (81%) and “Speeding up learning” (62.4%) as the top two perks. BUT ethical issues still remain top of mind for developers as well at 79.4%, followed by source attribution concerns at 64.7%.
Work & Employment
Developer Training It’s no new revelation that software development is a field of perpetual learning, and a large majority of that knowledge-sharing isn’t happening in the classrooms. 82% of developers are learning to code using online resources compared to 49% who are learning to code in school. However, 83% of developers report having some sort of post-secondary education and 66% reported having a BA/BS or MA/MS degree.
In regard to online resources to learn how to code, Technical documentation and Stack Overflow are the two most commonly used (83.9% and 80.3% respectively) with Written Tutorials, Blogs, How-to Videos and Video-based E-courses filling out the top 6. AI is used by 37% of developers (coming in at 9th), which is likely to rise and continue to affect developer roles in the future.
Employment Status (USA) Full-time Employed - 64.8% (down from 69% in 2023) Independent Contractor - 11.1% Full-time Student - 9.1% Not employed, but looking for work - 5% Part-time Employed - 3.4%
Employment Challenges & Status But with all this learning, are developers actually earning? One of the biggest questions on everyone’s minds is how the tech market is recovering from massive layoffs this year. Most developers reported annual salary decreases of $10,000+ from last year, including blockchain developers who reported a median annual salary of over six figures in 2023, now reporting $86,000. Even pivotal roles such as site reliability engineers and backend developers reported decreases of $15,000 and $9,000 respectively per year.
Regardless of salary decreases, employment status has remained strong. 80-81% of developers consistently report full-time employment over the last three years. And for the first time ever in the survey, Stack Overflow asked developers if they felt AI was a threat to their jobs, in which 70% agreed it wasn’t. Seasoned developers were far more confident with just 18% having hesitations compared to 27% of learners.
Despite a majority of the learning occurring outside of the classroom, developers’ biggest frustration is technical debt (62.4%). This issue was reported twice as much as the 2nd most frustrating problem of Complexity of Tech Stack for Beginners.
Work Environment On the bright side, 68% of developers reported being happy or complacent at work, including 74% of people managers. All developers found the most satisfaction in improving code and database quality in their roles, while happy developers reported higher levels of satisfaction than most in driving strategy at work.
Hybrid - 42% Remote - 38% In-person - 20%
Wrapping Up
While there weren’t too many big shockers coming out of this year’s survey, the rapid emergence of new developer technology and integration of AI will certainly continue to restructure the world of web development as we know it moving forward. While massive layoffs by Amazon, Microsoft, and more plagued 2024, it seems like a recovery is in the works as full-time developer employment remains solid.
But we will say, it’s not just the tools topping the list that are changing the web development game. In fact, at Assemble, we like to make our own tools to expedite and improve our own processes for clients. AND we offer services that do a deep dive into your creative production processes to help you implement the right tools and workflows to be as efficient as possible to stay ahead of the game in 2025. Looking for more insight into the tools and systems that your team needs? Check out our CreativePulse solution, or contact us for more info!