Stack Overflow today released the results of its2019 Developer Survey.
Some findings arent especially surprising.
The survey shows that Python remains a popular if not beloved programming language.
It also highlighted meaningful shifts in the ages when people learn to code.
Well talk more about both later.
There were some surprises, though.
Stack Overflow asked developers about how satisfied they were with their job.
It’s free, every week, in your inbox.
Theres a lot of overlap between DevOps and Site Reliability Engineering (SRE).
According to the survey, DevOps and SRE professionals rank among the most experienced workers in their organizations.
Coders have been automating tedious processes for years.
Emphasizing this point, the Bash scripting language turns 30 this year.
However, its only recently that teams routinely require dedicated DevOps and SRE personnel.
Thats arguably because applications are getting a lot more complex, while development teams simultaneously become larger and larger.
But that doesnt account for why theyre so content.
If a back-end engineer isKool, the folks in DevOps areThe Gang.
If software architects areEcho, SREs areThe Bunnymen.
But thats completely wrong.
Part of the answer is confidence.
If you constantly feel out of your depth, youre probably going to have a miserable time at work.
People working in DevOps and SRE dont have that problem at least, not all the time.
Code is written by a set of people, but then what are you going to do with it?
How are you going to get that code safely and reliably from the people who wrote it to production?
It probably helps that DevOps and SRE engineers are among the best paid software development professionals, too.
These buzzwords are pretty new, but theyre real things, trust me.
They even have their own Wikipedia pages.
And, in fairness, DataOps and MLops are both niches within a niche.
Maybe give it a couple of years before they make their mark on these important industry surveys.
Thats a pretty impressive figure by itself.
However, it gets even more interesting when you look at gender and regional variance.
The countries where people tend to start coding the earliest vary wildly.
Unsurprisingly, developers in affluent countries start earlier.
Silge mentions Australia and the UK.
Surprisingly, the US sits right in the middle of the table.
You wouldnt expect that, given its long-held position as the epicenter of all things tech.
America has Silicon Valley, Stanford, and MIT.
If anything, it should be leading the pack.
Despite that, it doesnt seem to have hampered them in any way.
If young people believe programming is a one-way ticket to a lucrative career, theyll pursue it.
And they do, with great enthusiasm.
They want to be the next Narayana Murthy or Satya Nadella.
And indeed, many have found success in the technology field.
Its well worth a read.)
Things get more interesting when you take into account the distribution of age.
In the UK, for example, it tells a story of government education policy over the years.
Thats not much of a surprise.
During the 1990s and 2000s, schools shifted away from teaching programming skills.
As computers became cheaper and more ubiquitous, the Labour government insisted that schools should teach Microsoft Office skills.
Pupils ceased to be creators of software, and instead became consumers of it.
This disastrous policy was canned during the coalition government, and in 2014 schools started teaching computing again.
Sadly, its not all good news.
According to the survey, girls tend to start programming much later than boys.
The actual figure varies depending on the country, but there is a meaningful gulf.
I asked Silge if this impacts girls further along in their career.
Unfortunately, the survey didnt try and get that qualitative data.
However, it could be an avenue for further research.
This is something were seeing across the tech field not just in programming.
Python was the second most beloved programming language in 2019s survey, only slightly behind Mozillas Rust programming language.
Python has long been favored by beginner programmers, thanks to its easily graspable syntax.
Despite that, its actually useful.
Python isnt a toy language.
Not by any stretch of the imagination.
DevOps engineers use it to script important tasks.
Its used heavily in AI and IoT scenarios.
Googles TensorFlow library is primarily used with Python.
In short, its just a really bloody lovely programming language.
Long may it reign supreme.
Wrapping up
Ive touched on just a few findings from the report.
If youre curious, you’ve got the option to check it outhere.
TNW Conference 2019 is coming!
