Javascript, MySQL and Linux have retained their places at the top of their respective technology categories for being the most popular, according to the 2019 Stack Overflow developer survey. Typescript and Python continue to impress with their growth in popularity, and open source has, as ever, a prominent place in the responses of the survey. Public cloud providers -- AWS, Azure and Google Cloud Platform -- make the list for most popular platforms again. AWS is still the most popular amongst those surveyed, with GCP overtaking Azure for the first time. The survey of almost 90,000 developers also collated demographic information, highlighting again the huge imbalance of the genders in the industry.
In the annual survey of developers, Stack Overflow respondents were again overwhelmingly male, with over 90% identifying as such. There has been little change since 2011. Based on the survey responses, the chances of this imbalance correcting itself soon is low. The proportion of professional developers that identify as male is aligned with the number of student developers.
Javascript has retained its place as the most popular programming language, a position it has held since the survey began in 2011. The top 10 continues to be dominated by some familiar faces, namely Java, C#, PHP, Python and C++. These have remained ever-present since the first survey. Python is the fastest growing of the major programming languages. In a similar vein to Python, Typescript continues to grow in popularity, gaining ground on the top 10, having made its debut in the 2016 survey with just 0.46% of respondents using it. If it follows the current trend it could break into the top 10 next year, with 21.2% of respondents now using it. According to the respondents, Python and Typescript filled second and third most loved programming languages, respectively, as well as ranking first and fourth on the listed of most wanted programming languages. This goes some way in explaining their growth in popularity.
Four public cloud providers appear in the survey responses. AWS maintains a healthy lead over Google Cloud Platform and Azure, and IBM Cloud is in a distant fourth with 1.4% of those surveyed using it. IBMs position is not a surprise when considering it is the least loved, most dreaded and least wanted of the four providers from the responses. Google Cloud Platform only appeared on the survey in the 2018 edition with 8% popularity, and has increased that value to 12.4% for 2019. AWS, Azure and IBM have remained fairly static in terms of popularity since 2017 when questions around platform usage first appeared.
Stack Overflow asked about container technologies for the first time this year, with Docker and Kubernetes making appearances amongst the most popular platforms, with Docker in third place. Both Docker and and Kubernetes rate highly on most loved and most wanted platforms amongst respondents. Based on past trends, 2020 could see further growth in popularity of those two technologies. Linux maintained its position as most popular platform, with Windows a close second.
Open source databases continue to lead the way in popularity amongst respondents. MySQL and PostgresSQL lead the way overall, with MongoDB the most popular NoSQL database in the list.
