Stack Overflow finds JavaScript is still king and 46% of developers don’t have a degree

Every year Stack Overflow surveys tens of thousands of developers through its service to gain insight into the state of development.

For 2016’s study 50,000 people responded from across the industry – and the findings are fascinating, as well as insightful.

The company found that JavaScript is still overwhelmingly the most popular development language, with more than 55.4 percent of people saying they use the language.

PHP fell 4 percent in the last year to 25 percent, which Stack Overflow attributed to the rise of Node and Angular, but Microsoft’s Visual Basic is the most “dreaded” language.

It also found that 46 percent of developers have no degree in computer science or any related field and that more than 57 percent of them check in code at work more than once a day.

Overall, the most popular developer job title was “Full-Stack Web Developer” at 28 percent, followed by “back-end developer” at 12 percent and “student” at 11 percent.

Interestingly the most common developer age is 25-29, with more than 28 percent of respondents fitting into the category, followed by 23 percent at 20-25.

The saddest statistic in the document, which has been highlighted as a major issue at many silicon valley tech companies, is that more than 92 percent of respondents were male, showing just how gendered the industry really is and how far we need to go.

The study provides a lot of other interesting data and is invaluable if you’re looking for insights into where to move next, or if you’re looking for an easy pay bump.

➤ Stack Overflow Developer Survey [SO]