This isn't a systematic analysis of StackOverflow's 2025 Developer Survey, it's the random tidbits I found most interesting.
(Okay, this was taking way longer than I anticipated, I'm breaking it up into two parts but also, I'm being long-winded. :-P Usually I go back and trim things down but if I don't post this now, I never will).
Developers Profile
- I'd like to see educational degrees split up by area of study. I've been doing this for years and have a B.S. but it's not even tangentially related to coding.
Technology
- It would be great to see these results graphed over time.
Programming Languages
- I appreciate that SO broke out JS and TS as two separate entries, but I'd also love to know what the percentage is when the two are combined. There would be a lot of overlap so it isn't as simple as adding the two percentages together.
Databases
- PostgreSQL dominating isn't surprising.
- I'm a little surprised that Valkey is relatively low (2.4%) compared to Redis (28%). I'll be interested to see if these percentages shift significantly in the next 12 months.
- It's interesting that Supabase is broke out separately from PostgreSQL, as under the hood it is PostgreSQL.
- I find it OpenSearch doesn't appear on the list. I'm wondering if many OpenSearch folks checked off Elasticsearch because that is what was listed?
Cloud development
- This is an interesting list, a number of the tools on this list can be used in cloud development but I wouldn't consider them cloud development tools (e.g. npm, pip, homebrew...).
- I'd maybe consolidate this list a bit to:
- Docker - 71.1%
- AWS - 43.3%
- Kubernetes - 28.5%
- Microsoft Azure - 26.3%
- Google Cloud - 24.6%
- Cloudflare - 20.1%
- Terraform - 17.8%
- Firebase - 13.1%
- Digital Ocean - 10.7%
- Vercel - 10.6%
- Netlify - 5.9%
- Supabase - 5.4%
- Heroku - 5.4%
- IBM Cloud - 1.2%
- Yandex Cloud - 0.7%
- I'm not familiar with all the tooling on the list, which should be on there that I didn't include? There were a few that were uncertain for me...
- I consider knowing Docker to be essential for developers working with the web. If you don't know it or a comparable containerization technology and are looking for a job - learn it, please. :)
- Cloudflare has really been stepping up its offerings on a continuous basis and are impressively close to Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure, much older players in the space.
- Supabase has acquired a respectable 5.4%, I anticipate that continuing to increase and would be surprised if some of that growth doesn't come at Firebase's expense.
Web Frameworks and Technologies
- Wow, there is a lot of tech lumped in here. Let's break this down a bit:
JS/TS
- Runtimes
- Node.js - 48.7%
- Deno - 4%
- Frontend Frameworks
- React - 44.7%
- jQuery - 23.4%
- Angular - 18.2%
- Vue.js - 17.6%
- AngularJS - 7.2%
- Svelte - 7.2%
- Server Side
- Next.js - 20.8%
- Express - 19.9%
- NestJS - 6.7%
- Astro - 4.5%
- Nuxt.js - 4%
.NET
- ASP.NET Core - 19.7%
- ASP.NET - 14.2%
- Blazor - 7%
Python
- FastAPI - 14.8%
- Flask - 14.4%
- Django - 12.6%
PHP
- WordPress - 13.6%
- Laravel - 8.9%
- Symfony - 4%
- Drupal - 2.2%
Java
- Spring Boot - 14.7%
Ruby
- Ruby on Rails - 5.9%
Dev IDEs
- As with Web Frameworks lets break things down a bit here:
Language Agnostic
- Visual Studio Code - 75.9%
- Visual Studio - 29% (agnostic-ish)
- Notepad++ - 27.4%
- IntelliJ IDEA - 27.1% (agnostic-ish)
- Vim - 24.3%
- Cursor - 17.9% - AI
- Neovim - 14%
- Nano - 12.2%
- More a text editor than an IDE.
- Sublime Text - 10.5%
- Claude Code - 9.7% - AI
- This isn't really an IDE in any traditional sense.
- Zed - 7.3%
- I haven't had a chance to use it, but I love that it is native code, not running on a browser.
- Eclipse - 7.1%
- VSCodium - 6.2%
- Windsurf - 4.9% - AI
Java
- IntelliJ IDEA - 27.1%
- Eclipse - 7.1%
Python
- PyCharm - 15%
- Jupyter Nb/JupyterLab - 14.1%
Android
- Android Studio - 15%
- I'd really like to see a competitor to this.
Apple
- Xcode - 10%
JS / TS
- WebStorm - 7.6%
.NET
- Visual Studio - 29%
- Rider - 7.1%
- I tend to use both VS and Rider when working on .NET projects, with a preference for Rider.
PHP
- PhpStorm - 5.8%
Rust
- RustRover - 3.2%
RAD AI Tools
I wouldn't consider these IDEs in any traditional sense.
- Lovable.dev - 2.4%
- Bolt - 2.3%
It's worth noting that a huge number of these IDEs are created by JetBrains (IntelliJ IDEA, Android Studio, PyCharm, WebStorm, Rider, PhpStorm, RustRover)!
If you know how to use one you will feel comfortable with others.
Also worth noting is that a number of the options are forks of Visual Studio Code (e.g., Cursor, VSCodium, Windsurf) and as such use a browser under the hood. Traditionally this has run pretty smoothly but with AI I'm finding that the browser rendering engines seem to struggle - this is true across IDEs and other apps (e.g. Chrome/Edge, Spotify).
Large Language Models
I've spent most of my time with OpenAI and Anthropic (Claude) models with minor experimentation with Gemini. I'm particularly interested in the Microsoft Phi-4 models as I think there is promise in smaller LLMs for many tasks.
Code Documentation and Collaboration Tools
This area could be split into a number of different areas and I wouldn't see a number of them as competitors.
Version Control
Both of the options here do a lot more than version control including CI/CD.
- GitHub - 81.1%
- GitLab - 35.6%
Project Management
- Jira - 46.4%
- This is common across the industry but I'm not sure I've met anyone who loves it.
- Azure Devops - 16.6%
- Is this where Devops fits? I've barely used it.
- Trello - 13.7%
- Now owned by Atlassian, who created Jira.
- Asana - 4.4%
- Clickup - 3.9%
- I am using this for some stuff currently and have found it to be a bit buggy.
- Linear - 3.7%
- I haven't used it recently, but when I did it was a pleasant experience.
- Microsoft Planner - 2.9%
- Monday.com - 2.6%
- Redmine - 2.5%
- Airtable - 2.5%
- I like this, it does more than project management...I'm not sure where to put it.
- YouTrack - 2.4%
Collaboration / Documentation
- Markdown - 34.8%
- I love markdown.
- Confluence - 32.8%
- Also by Atlassian, I like it more than Jira.
- Notion - 16.5%
- Obsidian - 16.1%
- This is for editing/managing markdown.
- Google Workspace - 15.2%
- Miro - 14.3%
- Whiteboard
- Wikis - 10.4%
- Best of both worlds is if you can use markdown in repos and have it fed into your wiki which covers more than individual repos.
- Google Colab - 7%
- I see this as more like Jupyter.
- Lucid (Lucidchart) - 5.3%
- Whiteboard and Diagrams
- Doxygen - 4.3%
- Stack Overflow for Teams - 2.4%
- Coda - 1%
- Similar to Notion
Operating Systems
- It took me a long time to get used to the fact that folks preferred Macs over Windows or Linux for coding. I think I've been around computers for too long and pre-*nix Mac I associated with artistic creative endeavors.
- The stat about Android exceeding Ubuntu usage is a bit confusing. People are doing significant amounts of development on Android? I find that hard to believe (unless its due to economic constraints).
- imho, following MacOS there should be a Linux category. Ubuntu, Linux (non-WSL), WSL, Debian, Arch, Fedora, Red Hat, etc. are all Linux distributions.
AI Agent Data Storage Tools
I'm a bit surprised to see supabase clocking in here at 20.9%!
AI Agent Orchestration Tools
- Ollama - 51.1%
- LangChain - 32.9%
- LangGraph - 16.2%
- Vertex AI - 15.1%
- Amazon Bedrock Agents - 14.5%
- OpenRouter - 13.4%
- Llama Index - 13.3%
- AutoGen (Microsoft) - 12%
- Zapier - 11.8%
AI Agent Observability and Security
- Grafana + Prometheus - 43%
- Sentry - 31.8%
- Snyk - 18.2%
- New Relic - 13%
- LangSmith - 12.5%
AI Agent Out-of-the-Box Tools
- ChatGPT - 81.7%
- GitHub Copilot - 67.9%
- Google Gemini - 47.4%
- Claude Code - 40.8%
- Microsoft Copilot - 31.3%
- Perplexity - 16.2%
Company Size
I'm surprised by how few developers are working solo (3.9%)!
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