AI Spotlight: 63% of Developers Engage with AI-Assisted Development

You’re familiar with at least one AI-assisted development tool; That’s right, the ChatGPT. Its popularity has skyrocketed in the last few months and with good reason.

It is designed to assist users in generating human-like text but it’s been helpful to developers too, as they can leverage ChatGPT to automate certain tasks, generate code snippets, assist in writing documentation, or even prototype conversational interfaces. While ChatGPT is primarily a language model, it can be used in the development process to aid in various aspects of software development.

In our 24th edition of State of Developer Nation, we asked developers if they use AI and how. This led to a dedicated chapter on all the new technologies that captivate developers’ imaginations. The data from our survey suggest that 63% of developers engaged in some aspect of AI-assisted development, making it evident that this technology is rapidly maturing and transforming from a mere trend to a valuable tool.

AI-Assisted Development: A Growing Trend

While overall engagement has experienced a slight decline of 4% over the past year, the nature of developer involvement has undergone a fascinating shift.

More developers are actively working on or learning about AI-assisted development, showing a 6% increase in engagement. 

Simultaneously, the number of developers with latent interest has decreased by 6%.

This dynamic suggests that AI-assisted development is maturing and gaining practical applicability in the development landscape.

Generative AI: Unleashing Creative Possibilities

Alongside AI-assisted development, generative AI has emerged as a new and exciting technology. 

With 57% of developers actively involved or interested in generative AI, curiosity and excitement abound. While AI-assisted development still leads in adoption at 17%, generative AI projects attract 14% of engaged developers.

The Many Uses of Generative AI

Developers use generative AI in three main ways: 

  • as a helpful tool for their development process
  • by integrating it into projects through APIs
  • or even by creating the models themselves.

Ongoing investigations are exploring these usage patterns to uncover more insights into this groundbreaking technology.

Challenges and Opportunities

Although generative AI is gaining high engagement, there are factors that affect its adoption among developers.

Some developers may be hesitant to rely solely on generative models for critical or security-conscious tasks. 

However, there is a growing adoption of generative AI for visual assets in software development, which reduces the risks of errors and security vulnerabilities.

Overcoming Challenges

Developers who work on generative AI models face the challenge of needing a large amount of training data. 

However, certain tools offer the ability to fine-tune pre-trained models for specific tasks, making this challenge easier to overcome. As developers become more familiar with assistive and generative AI technologies, we can expect a surge in their adoption, leading to innovation and creativity.

Leadership’s Role

Interestingly, leaders in C-suite and other leadership positions show higher engagement rates with emerging technologies. 

About 49% and 50% of those who approve tool expenses or budgets are actively involved in AI-assisted development. 

This trend suggests that the revolution in AI-assisted development is driven by leaders who recognize its potential.

Looking Ahead: The Changing Landscape:

When we take a broader view, we see a cyclical pattern in the adoption and interest in emerging technologies. Developer interest has dropped by 5% overall, while adoption has increased by 4 percentage points. 

This contrast indicates a dynamic shift in developer preferences, marking a change from previous trends.

In summary, AI-assisted development is rapidly evolving and attracting developers’ attention. Generative AI opens up exciting possibilities, and leadership engagement plays a crucial role in driving its growth. Cryptocurrencies continue to be intriguing, and the landscape of emerging technologies is constantly shifting. 

Did you find this article interesting? Download the full free report to learn about: 

  • The rest of the technologies that capture the developers’ imagination
  • The Role of female coders in software development
  • An update on language communities
  • How well-paid developers feel
  • What makes a high-quality API
  • An Overview of embedded software development

Shift-Left: The Crucial Role of Security in Early-Stage Software Development

Security threats in software development evolve at lightning speed in today’s digital age. With the average cost of a security breach in a hybrid cloud environment hovering at a staggering $3.6 million, it’s crucial for organisations to prioritize software security. 

This is why we recently partnered with Cisco; to uncover developers’ exposure to API security exploits, their outlook on security, and how they use automation tools to detect and remediate threats. We did so by exploring the findings from two global surveys that targeted enterprise developers and created the “Developers and Shift-Left Security” public report.

How is our report unravelling?

1. Security is a key priority for enterprise developers

Security threats are on the rise, with our survey data proving it; in fact, a whopping 58% of enterprise developers have had to tackle at least one API exploit in the past year alone. And to make matters worse, nearly half of them have experienced multiple API exploits during that time.

As modern applications increasingly rely on microservices, securing the APIs that connect these services becomes even more crucial. But with developers juggling multiple APIs, it can be a challenge to stay on top of security. That’s why it’s essential to prioritise security from the very beginning of development to avoid wasting time and effort on reworking code and dealing with exploits later on.

When it comes to security breaches, it’s best to prevent them altogether. But if they do occur, organizations must be prepared to act quickly.

Shockingly, our survey found that only one-third of enterprise developers can resolve API exploits within one day of a breach occurring.

By treating security as a top priority from the start of the development lifecycle, organizations can increase preparedness and avoid costly mistakes down the road.

2. How do enterprise developers address security?

The philosophy behind shift-left security is all about putting security at the forefront right from the start. It’s like having a VIP seat reserved for security at the decision-making table! 

By addressing security concerns early on in the development process, you can save a ton of money compared to dealing with security issues during deployment or after a security breach. In fact, our data shows that many organizations are already investing significant effort in identifying security vulnerabilities during the early stages of development, and as a result, have implemented additional security measures.

When do enterprise developers address security?

3. Automation makes things faster and less error-prone than manual operations.

We asked developers whether they use automated approaches to security, such as scanning tools or automated fixes. 

The most likely group of developers to adopt automated security approaches are key decision-makers and team leads who influence, manage, or set the strategy for their teams’ purchase initiatives (90%). 

This means that many developers still don’t use automation tools for security. However, it’s crucial for developers to use the best tools available to ensure they produce secure code.

In conclusion, APIs are crucial for modern software systems, but security exploits are a common occurrence.

A shift-left approach is vital for enhancing application security from the earliest stages of development.

 While more than half of enterprise developers are already shifting left, less experienced developers are lagging behind. To support this approach, automation is essential, with two-thirds of developers using automated security tools. 

However, developers motivated by gaining experience are less likely to use automation, so organizations need to balance the need for learning with the importance of using the best security tools available. 

Interested in the full data and graphs? Download the full report for free.

Adapting to Change: The Evolution of Data Management for Digital Native Companies in Turbulent Times

With the ongoing effects of the recent global pandemic and the European energy crisis, companies have had to adapt to changing environments both internally and externally. The ability to respond quickly to these challenges has become a defining characteristic of successful businesses. 

We recently partnered with Aiven to explore how digital native companies have evolved their data management practices in response to these challenges. 

The “2023 state of data management solutions for digital natives” report offers insights into the evolving data management landscape and the strategies used by companies to thrive in today’s business world. 

We define “fast growth” as the approach of adapting quickly to change and innovating, which is crucial for companies that want to expand. 

The data presented are based on a Q3 2022 survey of nearly 500 IT professionals at digital native companies worldwide.

What was happening in the past?

Firstly we’ll see which systems companies stopped using and which ones they plan to use in the future.

We found that when adopting a new data management solution, professionals must consider all options. Replacements occur when other products offer better benefits, not because the replaced system failed.

Data model fit is crucial when choosing a product, while pricing is essential when replacing one, especially for small businesses. Large enterprises prioritize technical support. 

Fast-growing companies prioritize service availability and disaster recovery capabilities, with 43% prioritizing this when adopting a data management tool. 

Inadequate backup/snapshot functionality is a common reason for replacing a tool, with 19% of fast-growing companies citing it. Conservative-growth companies are less likely to replace tools based on this feature.

While data model suitability is at the forefront of reasons for adopting data management tools, pricing is often the primary factor when it comes to finding alternative solutions. 

What is happening now?

What our analysis shows, for now, is that fast-growing companies prefer fully-managed services, while conservative-growth companies lean towards self-managed solutions, except for search technologies.

Interesting highlights:

  • On average, companies with an eye for scaling up are 16% more likely to use fully-managed services and are highly focused on search technologies and event streaming/message queue systems.
  • Faster-growing companies tend to be more likely to adopt open-source search technologies, with OpenSearch emerging as the most popular search technology among them.
  • 43% of those who work for companies with fast-growth business models prioritise service availability and disaster recovery capabilities when adopting data management products.

What does the future of management systems look like?

56% of respondents are looking to adopt at least one new system in the near future. 

Relational databases currently have the lead in adoption (78% of respondents), but the demand for streaming data is increasing with the reliance on artificial intelligence, and event streaming and message queues are on track to become the second most popular data management system type among digital native companies.

In terms of fully-managed services, security and performance are the most likely features to grow in importance, while pricing and cost optimization are the least likely. 

Fast-growing companies are more likely to adopt open-source data management products, while conservative growth counterparts are more concerned with scalability. 

Sustainable practices are becoming more important when selecting a DBaaS vendor, with a higher likelihood of prioritizing reducing environmental footprint over-optimizing costs.

Adoption of data management tools?

We dedicated a special section of our report to measure adoption. We look at 9 data management tool categories and see what % of the respondents are currently using or planning to use each data management system type. 

Does this align with your goals? Download the full free report to access all insights here.

A word from Aiven

Aiven’s cloud data platform helps your business reach its highest potential by making your data work for you. It provides fully managed open-source data infrastructure on all major clouds, helping developers focus on what they do best: innovate and create without worrying about the limitations of technology. We like to think that Aiven is not only a cloud data platform but also an extension of your team. We are dedicated to helping you to succeed by removing barriers and finding the right solutions – with the help of the best data technology there is.

About SlashData

SlashData has been surveying developers for more than 17 years. We talk to 30,000+ developers globally, on an annual basis. Leading tech brands rely on our insights for their developer-facing strategy. Leverage the rich data and our deep insights to segment, grow and engage your developer community by addressing their needs – directly. 

Software ate the world. What’s next?

Software is officially everywhere. Today, no matter what we do, we work in a tech business. We’ve been expecting this for a long time now. In fact, we bet our business on it.

Developers, developers, developers 2000

Before developers were coined the new kingmakers, before CEOs pointed out all companies are tech companies; SlashData was tracking software developers and trends. Nearly two decades ago, we believed developers were designing the world we were moving quickly to become. 
Since then, the world has changed more than a few times. Leading to the irony of the newest trend. Our daily feeds are flooded by 2 contradictory highlights:

  1. Learning how ChatGPT and AI software like it makes our lives and jobs easier
  2. Mass  tech layoffs


Well, with every challenge comes opportunity, and we decided to take a step back and find our clarity, to see our vision once again. Up till now we have been proud to say SlashData helps the world understand developers and developers understand the world, but why? 

What is the value we create as a result? 

A value-first approach 

We started asking – What is the core of our business? What is the reason for our existence in the vast universe of 0s and 1s? 
Understanding Developers is still our core. Quite simply, it’s what we do. We help technology companies, all companies, across industries, understand developers in order to make the right investment decisions. Know your customer, know your user and don’t forget – know your non-user. 
Then, data is still in our DNA – as it should be. How can you make decisions confidently otherwise? Intuition isn’t cutting it. Let’s face it, maybe we are in the position we are today, because too many people make major investment decisions based on hunches and assumptions. This is why SlashData is so critical to the way businesses should make decisions. 
Now more than ever, investment decisions must be supported by data. Decision making backed by data is the only way to optimise spending, create efficiencies and keep jobs.
Lastly, once you get down to the core of what we do – we listen to the market. We listen to developers. Tools, products, and solutions must be reactively built. If you’re not addressing a need, you are creating a solution for no one’s problem. Listening to developers, hearing their needs, preferences and whys, and then reacting to it is how you do that. 

Mission to the future

This is how we will empower developers to code the future. Our vision is to give a voice to the developers that is amplified and spread to the world’s largest companies to help them make the right decisions, spend less on mistakes, and effectively, (dare I say it?) make the world a better place. 
Here’s what will map our next steps 

Vision – Empowering developers to code the future

Mission – Understand developers. Inspire the future of technology

SlashData’s Mission and Vision 2023-onwards

We have the data, it’s now your turn to listen to it and Inspire the future of technology as a result. 

*Drops mic* 

Moschoula Kramvousanou is the CEO of SlashData.

What are the main challenges for developer programs?

It’s that time of the year again! The time when we run the Developer Program Leaders survey to hear from those who work with developer programs.

The goal? 

To understand their challenges, how they prioritise their resources and activities and offer insights into how they compare against other professionals in the field.

What do participants gain?

Those who will take the survey, will gain:

  • Unlimited access to the survey results with a report that illustrates the highlights and key graphs
  • All findings will be discussed in an interactive session where our research analysts and the DevRelX community will come together to discuss – Are you a DevRelX member? Join our community here!
  • A chance to win exclusive DevRelX swag.
  • You become involved in a collective effort to understand and improve how your peers work and set their strategy

Interested? You’ll need ±8 minutes. Take the survey

Who can participate?

We’re looking for professionals who are working in or with developer programs. This includes professionals in the following roles:

  • Developer relations practitioner
  • Developer marketing practitioner
  • Developer product architect/engineer
  • Community manager
  • VP/director/manager of a developer program
  • Analyst / analyst relations / research manager
  • Product management
  • General marketing (non-developer specific)
  • General management (CxO/VP/director/founder)
  • …and more

What types of questions does this survey ask?

  • Which regional markets does your strategy target?
  • Which resources take most of your budget?
  • What are the main challenges for your Developer Relations efforts this year?
  • Do you segment your developer audience? How?

Here are some results from the previous survey wave. 

It’s insights like these that you will be able to access to by responding.

Do you want to help professionals elevate their DevRel game? Have your say!

APP and API delivery: Deep dive into the NGNIX Community

Have you tried NGINX? Have you worked with a web server or reverse proxy? 

For those who have been living under a rock, NGINX is a web server that can also be used as a reverse proxy, load balancer, mail proxy and HTTP cache. It is also free and open-source software, released under the terms of the 2-clause BSD license in 2004. 

Last year, we collaborated with F5 NGINX to explore their community. We designed a survey that ran between August and September 2022 with more than 2,000 respondents worldwide. 

We took the survey findings and published the “NGINX State of App and API Delivery Report“.

In this report we conduct an in-depth exploration of the following:

  1. Profile of NGINX users. 

We provide an overview of the survey respondents’ profiles in terms of their geographic location, role, and size of their organization, while also focusing on their use cases and the challenges they face in application (app) and API delivery projects.

What did we discover? 

  1. 31% of all development roles also identify with leadership roles
  2. 44% of employees at large enterprises have nothing to do with security compared to 29% and 27% for those working at medium-sized and small businesses, respectively
  3. The largest issue faced by the NGINX community is a lack of technical skills. 
  4. When it comes to app and API delivery use cases respondents are working on, we find that nearly 50% are currently using web servers, 36% reverse proxies, and 34% load balancer
  1. Organisational approaches to APIs and the importance of App/API features.

 We then dive deeper into apps and APIs, by examining the degree to which organizations are adopting four key API first practices:

  • leveraging APIs as sources of revenue, 
  • designing the API first when building services, 
  • aligning APIs to their overall digital strategy,
  • And designing APIs to be reusable. 

Furthermore, we examine how these practices vary across company size.

We also explore how important security, scalability, and observability features are in app and API delivery projects.

One interesting highlight:

A higher share of those with no security responsibility recognises that user authentication and authorization are very important, compared to those who build security features into their apps.  

  1. Technology choices and development environments. 

Moving forward, we look at the technology choices and development environments of NGINX community members, with a focus on their workloads, Kubernetes adoption/maturity, where their code is run, and attitudes towards open source software.

We examine how role and organization size affects each of these topics, and compare the profiles of those with low and very high workloads.

Some interesting findings in this chapter include:

  1.  77% of the respondents who use a container orchestration tool are using a Kubernetes-based one.
  2. Scalability is the number one motivation for Kubernetes adoption
  3. The top 3 code deployment environments are public cloud, web client/front-end, and on-premises servers.
  1. Management, security, and monitoring/observability tool usage.

Finally, we take a look at which management/security and monitoring/observability tools the community uses, discuss cross-usage, and explore the differences between the profiles of those who use NGINX and those who don’t.

Among other things, we found that:

  1. Those in SecOps roles strongly favour 3 tools in particular: Google (excluding Firebase), SecureAuth, and Duo.
  2. 44% of respondents are currently working on authentication or authorization use cases 
  3. Those in Leadership roles are more likely to depend solely on NGINX configuration management tool.

Make sure to download the complete report to find out more on the importance of App/API features as well as on the usage on monitoring, security and management tools

Interested in finding out more about your community? Let’s talk


How companies and DevRel serve the communities developers join

Developer Program Leaders survey is now live! Have your say and access more results like the ones in this article.

If you have been following Developer Relations and Marketing for a while, you might have noticed how the community is becoming a more and more integral part of all strategic activities. Developer Relations is becoming (if not already) a community-led effort.

There is a huge benefit to any vendor to maintain a community for all the reasons that data shows us. If we can enable developers get more out of a product, if we can enable them to be excited about the product, share their experience with their peers and also progress through the community member’s lifescycle from new joiner to expert, we are helping them progress in their career and we’re also getting them more invested in our product and ecosystem. If you keep those core needs in mind, that’s when vendor communities start to add value.

Jamie Langskov, Community and change management strategist. 

Naturally, this leaves us asking: 

  • Where do communities fit in the perception of developers? 
  • Why are developers joining communities? 
  • How are developer-facing professionals address developers’ community needs?

We don’t have to guess these answers. We just need to look at the data Jamie is referring to. These data come from 2 surveys run by SlashData: the Developer Nation survey (developer-focused) and the Developer Program Leaders survey (DevRel-focused). Let’s look together at the insights these bring us. 

Where do communities fit in the perception of developers? 

Developers join communities to learn. According to the Q3 2022 Developer Nation survey, which surveyed 23,790+ developers, 19% of developers rank community in the top 5 resources that companies should offer to support developers. This makes the community 7th most important resource overall, just ahead of answers in public forums and only slightly behind professional certifications. 

Student developers’ professional aspirations

Having understood what makes developers join a community, we look at what the “next generation of developers” aka developers who are currently identifying as “students” look forward to. 

When asked about their top career aspirations, student developers (sample size of 4,790+) listed these as their top 3 aspirations:

  1. Solve problems
  2. Become an expert in a domain or technology
  3. Build innovative products/services 

You can see their full responses in the graph below. What the answers to this question show is how the community can be the place where student developers’ needs are getting addressed. The community can provide the space, the resources and the interactions that can help student developers meet with their top aspirations: solve problems and gain expertise in a domain or technology.

Are organisations paying attention to developers’ community needs?

Yes, they are. And we will data-back this affirmation by looking at the data from the latest Developer Program Leaders survey, where we surveyed ~130 industry professionals in developer-facing roles. The data speaks for itself. Communities are now sharing the spotlight with other traditional popular methods of developer education. And developer-facing organisations are aware. 

According to their responses, when the professionals are setting their strategy on how to talk to developers and address their technical audience needs, 73% consider community as (at least) a key part of their strategy. More specifically

  • 34% consider community as the most important part of their strategy  
  • 39% consider community as a key part of their strategy
  • Only 6% do not include the community in their strategy. 

You can see all responses at this graph:

What are developer program leaders’ roles?

By now we have established the importance of community in a developer marketing strategy. To better understand how this strategy is implemented, we will look at the hats these developer program professionals are wearing to implement this strategy and we will also look at the community sizes – for perspective.

With 73% of those professionals reporting community as a key part of their strategy, it comes as no surprise that 34% of them have “Community Manager” as their professional title, the second most popular, right behind “Developer Relations Practitioner” and only slightly above “Developer Marketing Practitioner”. 

“I’ll have one ‘large community, please”

Communities come in different sizes. While everyone strives to build a space with a massive, always active user base, the reality sometimes shows differently. In fact, only 4% of the Developer Program Leaders reported running an active community that counts more than 10M members. 27% responded to running communities smaller than 100 members. 

The less people are in a community, the more effort is needed to keep the discussion going. Which begs the question: how can you engage the community members?

Driving participation in the community

To answer this question, we don’t look at what community managers are doing to increase engagement in their communities. We ask developers what makes a community fun for them.

33% of developers (sample size 10,478) responded that having a well-designed community platform is their #1 reason that encourages them to participate. Four more reasons are tied for the second place, with 29% of respondents saying that what encourages them to be active are:

  • Getting regular updates
  • Fun activities
  • A well-defined purpose for the community 
  • Projects on which community members can work together

The latter one is especially important for students.

Here is the full breakdown of their responses:

Developer community + DevRel strategy wrap up

In summary, looking at the latest data from our Developer Nation survey (developer-focused) and the Developer Program Leaders survey (DevRel-focused) we reach the following conclusions which we discussed in this hopefully-not-that-long article:

  • Developers rank community at their top-5 resources 
  • Developers’ #1 reason for joining communities is training and resources 
  • A community can be the means to address student developers’ top aspirations
  • Community is considered a key part of a developer-facing strategy by more than ⅔ of developer program leaders
  • Community management is the second most popular title 
  • Communities come in all shapes, but even more sizes
  • Developers share what makes them engage in a community and are happy to share it. 

How are you addressing your developer community? Join the discussions with like minded people at the DevRelX community. If you want more data on developer needs and wants or you are trying to better understand developers, SlashData has the insights you need. 

Did you know that 60% of game developers use game engines?

Games are one of the most popular forms of entertainment and gamers demand high-performance and cutting-edge designs. Performance is also key to developers who work on creating games. 

Considering the popularity of this entertainment niche, we take a look at how developers work on creating the games; more specifically: game engines. This article is based on “Game Engines and their use in Game Development” Developer Ecosystem Insights. In this report, we explore the state of game development and look at engines and the technologies developers use for creating video games.

The embrace of game engines

Around 42% of the developer population is involved in the games sector—either as a professional, student, or hobbyist. The developers have a wealth of technologies from which to choose, among which, game engines are the most prevalent.

 47% of developers use 3D game engines; while 36% use 2D game engines.

Some of these developers use both 3D and 2D, leading to a total usage of 60% of the game developer population. As the name suggests, the difference between 2D and 3D games lies in the number of axes of motion available to the players. In 2D games, there is no perspective, fewer possible movements, and therefore, fewer interactions with other characters or objects in the game—resulting in these games being typically less complex than 3D games.

60% of game developers use game engines

As recently as 2017, our data showed that developers used 2D and 3D game engines equally, with 44% and 45% usage respectively. In subsequent years, however, the chasm between the two has widened — by 11 percentage points. 

Overall, a similar percentage of developers are using game engines: 

63% in Q2 2017, compared to 60% in Q1 2021. 

However, far fewer developers are now only developing games with 2D engines, which is down 7 percentage points from Q2 2017. On the other end of the scale, sole usage of 3D game engines is up 5 percentage points. The large rise in 3D usage is due, in part, to the impact of VR gaming; as well as the dominance of smartphone and native desktop games which, when coupled with modern powerful hardware and larger screen sizes, encourage increases in game complexity. The platforms targeted by developers who use game engines will be explored further in chapter three.

Uneasy rests the head that wears the crown

Unity has the largest share of the game engine market: 38% of game developers who use game engines use Unity as their primary engine. The next most popular game engine, Unreal Engine, has 15% usage as a primary engine—much lower than Unity. Unity’s dominance is clear, but the gap between Unity and its competitors is closing. Overall usage of Unreal Engine—both as a primary and an ‘also using’ game engine—is currently at 43%. 

In Q2 2017, it was at 20%. Unreal Engine’s focus on higher-end graphics and performance allows it to fill an important segment—their latest release of UE5 looks poised to continue this trend—but the engine is harder to use than Unity and is accessible on fewer platforms, somewhat restricting mass adoption. On the other hand, Unity remains king of the gaming market because it has succeeded in doing many things well: it is considered the best engine for mobile, excels in, and has a much larger and focussed tool-set for 2D games.49% of developers using Unity use Unreal Engine; while 76% of those using Unreal Engine find themselves using Unity.

Traditionally, Unity’s versatility has not been easily replicated, but developers are currently finding success in combining game engines to access the unique advantages of each. Typically, developers use more than one game engine: 64% of developers using game engines are using two or more, and 38% use three or more. Developers using offerings from vendors with a smaller market share tend to use multiple game engines at the same time. The smaller engines often lack all the capabilities of Unity and Unreal Engine, leading to game developers mixing engines to find their optimal usage combinations. These engines’ market share comes predominantly from their role as additional game engines. For example, Godot has a 20% usage as a game engine which developers are also using, but only a 5% usage as a primary game engine.

The reasons for the popularity of game engines are many, but one of them is the undeniable fact that game engines can shorten production time and costs. This makes this kind of technology more appealing than ever to a wide range of developers, ranging from amateurs to professionals, who are trying to gain a foothold in the industry.

What are your thoughts?

This data is just the tip of the iceberg or in gaming terms – a small tutorial or walkthrough. We have a lot more insights and data to share with you on games, including:  where game developers work, how and where to reach them and even a forecast of their population for 2023. Access all data here 

We can go on this adventure together. Contact us 

State of the Developer Nation 23rd edition: the fall of web frameworks, coding languages, blockchain, and more!

It’s the most wonderful time of the year! Yes, the beginning of the “Merry” season but also the time when new insights from the world of developers come to everyone’s house (magic may or may not be involved)!

Stay up to date with the 23rd edition of the State of the Developer Nation report and get the insights you would only pick up by slashing through data with your own two hands.

Our 23rd Developer Nation global survey reached more than 26,000 developers in 160+ countries and its findings are bundled in a free “State of the Developer Nation” report. 

This research report delves into key developer trends for Q3 2022:

  1. The state of blockchain development
  2. Students’ top career aspirations
  3. Language communities – An update
  4. Why developers contribute to vendor-owned open-source projects
  5. Types of studios game developers work for
  6. The rise and fall of web frameworks

In addition to outlining the report’s major findings, here are a few key takeaway points to spark your curiosity:

The state of blockchain development

  • 25% of developers are currently working on or learning about blockchain applications other than cryptocurrencies. 
  • Developers with 6-10 years of experience in software development are the most likely to be working on blockchain projects.
  • Though Ethereum is the dominant blockchain platform, it is the only one more popular among learners than those currently working on blockchain applications.

Language communities – An update

  • Javascript remains the largest programming language community, with an estimated 19.6M developers worldwide using it.
  • In the last two years, Java has almost doubled the size of its community, from 8.3M to 16.5M. For perspective, the global developer population grew about half as fast over the same period.
  • Kotlin and Rust are the two fastest-growing language communities, having more than doubled in size in the past two years. 

The rise and fall of web frameworks

  • Web developers who use frameworks are more likely to be high-performers in software delivery than those who don’t.
  • Web developers are gradually settling for a smaller number of frameworks as they stop experimenting with a wide range of tools.
  • React is currently the most widely used client-side framework and its adoption has remained stable over the past two years. By comparison, jQuery’s popularity is decreasing rapidly.  

As you’ll notice, most of the trends we discuss in this report are takeaways from how developers use technology. Our goal is to share these insights with the world to help guide the next generation of development. 

You can download the full report for free and access all data and insights within.

If you need additional information or looking to understand developer preferences’, please get in touch with us and we will dive into it together.

Using SlashData custom questions to understand AI software developers

Our mission is to help our clients understand what the market looks like, what developers need, what excites developers, what doesn’t, and what they expect from our clients’ (and their competitors’) products and the developer programs that go along with them. So, when we are approached with a request for some custom work, we roll up our sleeves and dive deep into the data.

In this case study, we will be looking at how one of our clients, worked with us to understand the needs and preferences of software developers working with AI. 

The client is a company among the top 50 in the 2022 Fortune 500 ranking, which for the purposes of this case study we will be calling “Client”. This is the third installment in our “how we work with clients” series, and you can read part 2 and part 1 with Okta for more details. 

In this article, we will look into their request and more specifically:

  • The questions our Client wanted to answer
  • How we worked together on their problem
  • How they used the insights we offered them

The request

Understanding the needs of AI software developers

The Client wanted to better understand the needs of AI software developers, so we worked with them closely to understand the problem they were trying to solve. Then, together we made sure that we added custom questions to our Developer Nation survey, to get the answers from developers. 

Question: What was the goal/challenge you were looking to accomplish?

Client: We wanted to get feedback from our customers, who are software developers that work on AI, so we could get a better understanding of their needs:

  • What they’re actually doing 
  • The specific points that we are trying to optimize. 

We wanted to answer high-level questions such as what language they are using and high-level computing preferences. This is why we decided we want to have this survey. 

Q: Why did you choose SlashData?

At Client, we have had the experience of working with SlashData. And we did get a high value out of the previous report that you did for us. I was impressed by the support that I got when I needed it, the responsiveness, how you were always on schedule. The real part of working together. I felt how you put the customer at the front, the priority. All of these were very important to us. This is why we chose to work with you again on this project. 

Working together

I really got the feeling that you’re trying to understand real problems

Q: What did you like about the process of working with SlashData?

I really liked the execution: the ability to execute fast and answer our questions. We worked very well, very collaborative. Truth is, we did have a slow start. But then you said “let’s do this: you will write your assumptions, we will ask questions and approach this project this way”. Once we started that, work was progressing in a much better way. It was hard at the beginning, but I got excellent support. You had excellent questions, I really got the feeling that you’re trying to understand real problems. “What is it that we are trying to solve?”. You also asked questions to learn more about what we are doing, which I found very professional.

Q: What are the things you found challenging when working with SlashData?

We said that we would be adding X custom questions to your survey. But from our side, we tried to add more and more and we were left with all those very complex questions. 

Very complex questions are tougher to answer when you are looking to gain something specific. You did tell us to get the simple questions answered. This is what comes to mind in retrospect: Don’t make the questions too complex, trying to squeeze in more. You will get more value out of the simple questions, not the very complex ones. 

Deciding using the data

I used a significant part of those questions to presentations I gave to our senior executives.

Q: How did this project/report/data solve your problem/challenge overall? Did you understand the developers’ problems more based on the report?

I used a significant part of those questions to presentations I gave to our senior executives. I was especially more confident to use the less complex questions we asked. If I had my current experience in the beginning, I would have managed to secure a higher budget to ask more, simpler questions. 

data that show what our customers think and therefore, we could work with more than just our own thoughts and assumptions

Q: What decisions did you make using the data/research?

The work we did together was part of a huge project that Client is working on. I’m afraid I can’t disclose exactly the steps we did take after going through the analysis you gave us. What I can tell you is that senior management really liked the fact that we spoke to our customers and asked them directly. And not only that, but we also brought data that show what our customers think and therefore, we could work with more than just our own thoughts and assumptions. Client is planning for some huge products and of course there are a lot of parameters and a lot of things being done. But this data helped us pick a direction. 

How would you describe the service quality?

The service was excellent, really.

This interview is part 3 of the “How we work with our clients” series. The product this client worked with was custom questions and analysis and a custom report, to target their specific needs. You can also see how Okta managed to reach the top 3 in developer satisfaction using our Developer Program Benchmarking and how another client used our Deep Dives to boost their Developer Experience.

Working on a new initiative or want to make sure your product will win developers’ hearts? Talk to us.