CodinGame Developer Survey 2020

The majority of developers (58.2%) learn to code either at university or at school. However, close to 35% (34.6%) consider themselves to be self-taught. Although more than 1 in 3 developers learnt to code all on their own – thanks to the free and handy resources out there: tutorials, books, YouTube, etc. – none of them consider that they simply learnt “on the job”.

The majority of developers have gone on to achieve a higher level of education: 54.8% of them hold either a Master’s or a Bachelor’s degree (2% even have a PhD!).

This is very cool. However, formal education isn’t the only path to developer greatness. In fact, 21.7% of developers say they don’t have any formal qualifications. It’s what you know that counts!

Those who do have a formal qualification generally studied computer science. Go figure, huh?

Obvious as that seems, a whole bunch of developers (close to 10%) studied something else entirely: business, architecture, marketing, philosophy and more!

Coding, like learning a foreign language or French cuisine, is a continuous learning journey. Developers are always perfecting their skills and learning new ones.

A massive 64.9% say they devour online written tutorials (blogs, official documentation, etc.). YouTube is also a popular go-to for developers hungry for knowledge: 60.8% state it as their favorite medium to improve their coding skills or learn new ones.

What’s more – and we’re particularly pleased to read this – over half of developers hone their skills on competitive programming platforms like CodinGame.

Well, the vast majority of developers (69.7%) think so.

Not only do programmers keep up to scratch thanks to various resources, they also keep their coding skills up to date by doing (well, coding).

1 in 3 developers say they code for more than an hour a day outside of work or school.

The top three things developers would like to learn more about in 2020 are: Machine Learning/AI (49.2%), Game development (35.4%) and Web development (33.1%).

Node.js, React and .NETCore make the top three, closely followed by AngularJS and Spring.

Javascript, Java, Python and C++ are the best-known programming languages: over half of our respondents answered that they know how to code in these languages.

However, rare are the developers who know how to code in Clojure, F# or OCaml.

It’s no wonder that Python, Javascript and Java are in the top three of best-known programming languages – it’s because developers can’t get enough of them! They’re the most-loved coding languages.

Special mention for Python, in top position for the third year in a row. The language has truly captured developers’ hearts.

Oh! There’s Java and Javascript again! These two programming languages seem to divide developers: they either hate ’em or they love ’em. The languages are cited both as two of the most-loved and most-hated languages.

There’s one language, however, that everyone agrees on – and that’s PHP. PHP is recognized, yet again, as developers’ most-dreaded language.

When asked, on a scale of 0 to 10, how much they enjoy their job, 66.4% of respondents answered between 7 and 10, giving an average rating of 7.0 out of 10.

On a scale of 0 to 10, do you enjoy your current job? 0: I hate my job; 10: I adore my job!

As we’ve mentioned before, higher education and formal qualifications aren’t the only path to developer success and fulfilment.

In fact, developers are happy at work regardless of whether or not they learnt to code in a formal setting. For example, self-taught developers rate their happiness at 6.94 out of 10, whereas developers who went to university give an average mark of 6.91.

Along the same lines: developers who don’t have a formal qualification rate their happiness at work at 7.10 out of 10, whereas developers with a Master’s degree give an average mark of 6.96.

The moral of the story, we think, is that you can become a fulfilled programmer no matter your educational background.

Developers from all over the world took part in our survey. With their answers, we were able to put together a leaderboard of the top 10 countries where it’s goooood to be a developer!

The United Kingdom, Canada and the US make up the top 3.

Developers work in all kinds of industries: from IT services to Retail or Healthcare.

We’ve put together a leaderboard of the top 10 industries where developers are happiest. The gold medal goes to the Technology industry. Silver and bronze go to the Media and Education industries.

We found that the happiest developers are data scientists and game developers.

What’s more, we’re thrilled to see that teachers, trainers and educators also love what they do. True, how empowering to pass on your programming know-how! We’re glad to see that the world’s future coders are in the hands of people who are passionate about what they do.

The majority of our respondents (64.09%) are between 20 and 34 years old.

Close to 90% of our respondents identify as “male”. However, the proportion of women who took part in our survey has progressed from 6% (2 years ago) to 8.7% (last year) to 11.5% this year. Baby steps in the right direction.

Over 21,000 developers from all over the globe took part in our survey. The main represented countries are: France, The United States, India, Germany, Russia, United Kingdom, Ukraine, Canada, Brazil, Poland and Spain.

50.1% of respondents are employed full-time.

Students represent 31.3% of participants, whereas job seekers only represent 8.3%.

Overall, active professional developers make up over 60% of our community.

Senior developers (over 5 years of experience) represent 38.8% of respondents, whereas junior developers (less than 3 years of professional experience) represent 43%.

32.3% of respondents work in a company with over 1000 employees. Companies with 50-249 employees come next, representing 21.5% of respondents. Small companies and startups with less than 10 employees represent 8.5% of respondents.

The most frequent position among respondents was “Full-stack developer” (24.6%), followed by “Software developer” (20.3%) and “Back-end developer” (12.9%).

22.9% of respondents work in the “IT services” industry, followed by “Technology” (13.5%) and “Finance” (9.2%). 10.7% of respondents chose to describe their industry as “Other”. Answers included Marketing, Transportation and Entertainment.