The 2024 Developer Survey

I am a bit disappointed that you only ask further AI related questions to people that either use AI for development work or plan to use it.

It is quite possible for someone to have a good knowledge of how AI works, what are its downsides and upsides, can evaluate its usefulness, and even more being able to answer whether they are afraid that AI will jeopardize their job or not while at the same time not using it for development and work.

If it is not possible for changing this part in the current survey, then please do that for the next year's survey.

The frequency intervals (still) have a significant gap

This problem is still exactly the same as when it was reported each of the previous two years, so I'm just going to quote myself quoting Clonkex's answer from two years ago:

This problem is still exactly the same as when it was reported last year, so I'm just going to quote Clonkex's answer from last year's survey:

What's with these intervals? From 1-2 times a week to never? What about 1-2 times a month? None of the options fit my case. I don't interact outside my team very often (maybe once or twice a month) but when I do it's usually because of knowledge silos.

The quote nesting will continue until the response options improve.

On the "What is your age" question:

The options are shown as checkboxes, but behave like radio buttons. In other questions, the radio buttons actually look like radio buttons, so why do the buttons on this question look like checkboxes?

I faced an audit question that asked me to select the "Apples" answer.

I would like to know the statistic result of this particular question after the survey ends.

For example, how many people faced this question, how many get this question right, and how many get it wrong.

I know it can be skipped, but the question "Assign points to the following attributes of your job according to those that contribute the most to your satisfaction out of 100 total points" really needs to have an 'Other' option since the options provided make a lot of assumptions about what is motivating people.

I've known more than a handful of developers over the years that would say the most satisfying thing is the paycheck, and there are others that care less about the tools and more about what they are producing (e.g., a game developer getting satisfaction from the game they shipped and how it was reviewed).

How do you learn to code? Select all that apply.

How do I currently learn how to code (i.e. build upon my existing knowledge of how to code)? Or how have I gotten my knowledge of how to code to the point where it's at?

As someone who has been coding for multiple decades, the answers to the two are very different.

I learned to code primarily from physical books, and from university courses, and from reading API documentation. I almost never do the first any more, I'm not in university so I don't do the second, and I do the third but it's more about making me more aware of existing and new features in the ecosystem and not "learning to code".

Professionally, I've learned much of what I've needed to know day-to-day by Googling it and reading about it on Stack Overflow and blogs. And that's currently my main way of finding stuff out.

It's arguable that I'm not even really "learning to code" at this point in my life, so much as learning new frameworks and technologies and fitting them into my already existing knowledge of "how to code".

What is meant by "Overflow API"?

The question "Which of the following Stack Overflow sites have you visited? Select all that apply." has, as one of the options, "Overflow API".

There is no site or product by this exact name. It may refer to:

• This page promoting OverflowAPI (note: no space), "a subscription-based API service that provides continuous access to Stack Overflow’s public dataset to train and fine-tune large language models." However, that doesn't exactly seem like a "site".
• Whatever non-public documentation, if any, may exist for the OverflowAPI product described on that page.
• The Stack Exchange API. This would make the most sense to ask about as a site that one might have visited in a public survey, but it is the furthest from the name used.

Consider renaming "Professional degree" to "Doctoral degree" or "Doctorate" since an academic Ph.D. is not generally considered a professional degree.

Also, nit: In the professional degree list, the use of periods is either inconsistent (JD and MD) or incorrect (Ph.D and Ed.D).

• Either drop all periods
• Or use periods consistently/correctly
  • JD -> J.D.
  • MD -> M.D.
  • Ph.D -> Ph.D.
  • Ed.D -> Ed.D.

Is this only asking about use of tools in a work or other programming context?

The question "Which communication tools did you use regularly over the past year, and which do you want to work with over the next year?" includes a number of options that are very commonly used in both a professional/programming context, as well as contexts related to neither work nor programming. For example, I use Discord to talk to friends, but I have never used it for anything related to work or programming.

Maybe since the survey has ended someone can remove this reminder :)

This post says extended to June 20th but clicking the link above shows survey has ended.

Pretty sure you put some stuff related to C and C++ in an unintended section: Boost.Test, build2, Catch2, CMake, cppunit, doctest, GNU GCC, Clang, Meson, MSVC, Ninja, QMake, Scons. You put them under embedded (which... technically isn't wrong since you might use this stuff doing embedded development) when they'd make much more sense under build and test.

Probably too late to fix this in the input form, but at least you could try to move it in the results. I think it might be embarrassing for you otherwise.

"Thinking about how your job and process changes over time, how integrated in your workflow do you anticipate AI tools you are currently using will be 1 year from now?"

This question uses check-boxes, but surely should be radio buttons? Also perhaps the previous question that the options are based on -- but I can see the argument either way for that one

Which other frameworks and libraries have you done extensive development work in over the past year, and which do you want to work in over the next year?

This question has "Ruff" as an option, but Ruff is neither a framework nor a library.

The first section asks for my current status, I selected "Retired". One of the last questions I was asked was about my current position. As I have retired none of the options suited, so I had to enter that in the "Other" box.

Which of these company challenges causes you the most frustration? Select all that apply.

I am strongly missing options for anything related to quality assurance.

Or was it left out, because too many would check it, if even just out of resentment?

Jokes aside, in my company, QA is a major challenge, because we are doing archive migrations. Therefore, we have to interface with legacy systems that we often don't have direct access to in early development phases and usually our options for deployment are quite limited, too. This make it really hard to assess the correctness of anything we build, which then usually spreads to other departments in the company, because for example how do you plan a project with that?

The estimate of 15 minutes I think is well low. I think it took me about 25 minutes to finish, having to take time to consider the myriad platforms and frameworks and so on, and that's even saying no to the AI question, so I didn't get to answer that section.

A question asks

What is the source of the technical documentation you use most often to learn to code?
Select all that apply.

And these are the possible answers:

1. API document(s) and/or SDK document(s)
2. User guides or README files found in the source repository
3. First-party knowledge base
4. Traditional public search engine
5. AI-powered search/dev tool (free)
6. AI-powered search/dev tool (paid)
7. Other (please specify)

I don't understand the difference between 1) and 3). What's the difference between "API/SDK documents" and "first-party knowledge base"? They seem the same thing to me.

The survey results site has several problems. I still have not gone through the survey completely, so here just few ones I noticed:

• (On Firefox) Charts with multiple tabs do not show any data until you switch between the tabs.

• Clicking on "community" on the main page tiles leads to an error page GIF of "community is undefined".

  • The problem is that the URL is apparently case-sensitive: clicking the tile leads to https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2024/Community/ with a capital "C" which does not work. While https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2024/community/ with a lowercase "C" does work.

• Some charts show very suspicious numbers of responses that I do not believe can be correct. For example in "Frequency of participation on Stack Overflow" there are four tabs, each has the number of responses in the lower right. Here they are:

  • All Respondents: 45,237 (69.1%)

  • Professional Developers: 4,139 (6.3%)

  • Learning to Code: 4,139 (6.3%)

  • Other Coders: 45,237 (69.1%)

    I find it extremely unlikely that "Professional" and "Learning" have the exact same number of responses. Even if they do, I do not think it possible that "All" and "Other" are the same.
    I found a similar thing in other questions - the exact same number of responses for two different tabs, however I cannot reliably reproduce it. I think the "Frequency of participation on Stack Overflow" question has consistently wrong.

• The "Previous" link at the bottom goes to the current page you're on. For example, if you are in the "Work" section, the Previous link leads to "Work". The Next link does go to the next section.

This is an incomplete list of just few things I noticed.

On the questions about what language/framework/etc I use now vs what I want to be using in a year, the “want” always confuses me. Does it really mean “want”, as in even if I stop working I’d continue to play around with it or if I switch jobs I’d try to introduce it at my new employer, or is it more what will I be working with in a year, which could be because I want to, or more likely, because that’s what the company I work for uses?

The questions about the technologies that we "do extensive development work in" are ambiguous. For example:

Which embedded systems and technologies have you done extensive development work in over the past year, and which do you want to work in over the next year?

In the last year I've been working on a project that is built using QMake (which is on the list). Do I do extensive development with it? I'm not sure what you mean!

Sometimes I compile tens of times per day. And yet, I've never modified a single .pro file, except for really trivial stuff, like adding a new source file to the list of the existing ones. I've never changed compiler flags, linker flags, options, paths, dependencies, anything: all of these things were set up by others long before I joined the project.

So QMake is used in my project, yes, but not really by me, or at most in a very passive way. Does that count as "doing extensive development work with it"?

The question regarding the compensation, it does not mention which currency I should input my compensation in. Though it asks for my currency, it does not make it obvious whether or not the currency I choose here is the one to be considered for the compensation field.

Does anyone know what currency applies to the compensation field?

On this question:

Which of the following describes your current job, the one you do most of the time? Please select only one.

There isn't anything between an Engineering Manager and Senior Executive (C-Suite, VP, etc). In my opinion a director role does not fit well in either of this. I used the Other (please specify): option, but I guess this is a somewhat common answer that deserves its radio button (and this would make sure people don't write it out differently).

I can take the survey twice! Is it by design? If it is, why?

It would have been nice to have been sent your responses. This way, I can observe my own changes over time as well as feed my AI Dev Coach.