JavaScript is still number one – JetBrains report

JavaScript is the most-used programming language, according to JetBrains’ State of Developer Ecosystem Report 2024. But the languages with the most promising growth prospects are TypeScript, Rust, and Python, the report says.

This year’s report found that JavaScript, with 61% of developers worldwide using it to create web pages, remains the most popular programming language in the world. Python was the second most used programming language, the report found, with 57% of developers, followed by HTML/CSS with 51%, SQL with 48%, Java with 46%, and TypeScript with 37%. Among these languages, however, usage increased only for Python and TypeScript (by 3% in both cases) from the previous year. Usage of C#, Go, and Rust also increased, the report found, all by 1% from the prior year.

Released December 11, the eighth edition of JetBrains’ annual State of the Developer Ecosystem Report is based on responses from 23,262 developers worldwide, surveyed between May and June 2024.

To better assess the growth prospects of programming languages, JetBrains’ 2024 report introduces the JetBrains Language Promise Index, which is based on the growth in usage of the language over the past five years, the stability of this growth, the share of developers intending to adopt the language, and the share of the language’s current users who want to adopt another language.

Based on this formula, the “undisputed leaders” of the JetBrains Language Promise Index are TypeScript, Rust, and Python, JetBrains reported. TypeScript usage has surged from 12% in 2017 to 35% in 2024, while Python usage has grown from 32% in 2017 to 57% in 2024 and Rust usage has grown from 2% in 2018 to 11% in 2024. Java usage, meanwhile, has slipped from 47% in 2017 to 46% in 2024, although it had surged to 54% in 2020.

Despite its gains, TypeScript will not replace JavaScript, according to the report. JavaScript remains one of the most popular and fundamental technologies in the software development industry. Still, TypeScript offers benefits over JavaScript including early error detection during development, improved code quality, compile-time error catching, more reliable refactoring, and native support for ECMAScript 2015 (ES^) modules.

Other findings in the State of Developer Ecosystem Report 2024:

Go and Rust are the languages most respondents plan to adopt.

Aspiring to replace C++ with strict safety and memory ownership mechanisms, Rust has seen its user base rise steadily over the past five years.

ChatGPT is the most-tried AI coding tool, with 69% of developers having tried it, followed by GitHub Copilot at 40%.

The US has the highest median salary for developers at $144,000.

Most developers (38%) said understanding user requirements was the most challenging part of the job, followed by communication with other job roles (34%) and understanding other people’s code (32%).

Open source databases – MySQL, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, SQLite, and Redis – dominate the storage options used by developers in the JetBrains ecosystem.

Amazon Web Services is by far the most commonly used cloud platform, with 46% of respondents using it, followed by Microsoft Azure at 17%.