5 takeaways from the Python Developer Survey 2019
Last week the Python Software Foundation (PSF) published the results of the Python Developer Survey 2019. The research was conducted in the fall of 2019 and collected answers from over 24 thousand Python developers from 150+ countries. The Python Developers Survey is an official instrument endorsed by the PSF and serves as a reference to understand what is going on in the Python world.
With no further ado, let’s take a look at some interesting facts from the research!
1. JavaScript is still the most popular ‘second language’…
JavaScript is still the most popular ‘second language’ among Python developers, no news here, but we see that this number decreased by 8% compared to 2018. Below you can see the results for ‘Python usage with other languages’.
2. Python is, indeed, a flexible language…
For the second year in a row, ‘Data Analysis’ was selected by 59% of the respondents when asked ‘What do you use Python for?’. Following the trend of fewer people choosing for JavaScript (previous fact), the number of respondents that selected ‘web development’ as an option dropped by 4% in comparison to 2018.
An interesting fact from this set of questions is that, on average, users chose 3.9 different purposes for using Python, evidencing one of the main characteristics of the language, flexibility. Below you see the distribution for the question ‘What do you use Python for?’
3. Python 2 is almost gone but is still alive…
Python 2 is no longer officially maintained and, as expected, the majority of the respondents are using Python 3. The interesting fact, though, is that Python 2 is still used by 10% of the respondents, 6% less than in 2018, but still far from an end.
4. AWS is still the main cloud platform, but containers became more popular than virtual machines…
AWS maintained its 55% relative market share within Python developers, but Google and Microsoft came closer by increasing their market share by 3% and 4% respectively (vs. 2018).
Running the code in the cloud had a change when compared to 2018. Containers became the most popular choice, surpassing the option for virtual machines. See below the distribution for the question ‘How do you run your code in the cloud in the production environment?’:
5. PyCharm is the most popular Python IDE!
For the fourth year in a row, PyCharm is the main IDE used by Python developers independently of their development context: web development or data science. See below the distribution among users who chose Python as their main language:
The Python ecosystem evolves and changes every year. It is always a pleasure for us at JetBrains to join efforts along with the PSF to enrich our understanding of this amazing programming language that we love so much.
Find the full results at the official Python Developer Survey 2019 page and, this year, you can also download the anonymized data and use your Python and data science skills to explore the data yourself!
If you decide to do so, please let us know what else did you find!
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