Mac Dev Survey 2016
The Results
7,291 web and software developers working on the Mac answered our call and took part in our 2016 survey.
Besides working through 27 individual questions, they also answered a more far-reaching question: Who are we as a community?
Here are the final results.
Developer Profile
Age & Work Experience
The average developer is in their mid-thirties and incredibly intelligent (although we cannot prove the latter with our data...). At the same time, they have quite some experience under their belts: 3 out of 4 developers have 5+ years of experience. And one in two, as a matter of fact, is already in the game for more than 10 years!
Gender
- 95 %
- 4 %
- 1 % prefer not to disclose
With 95% of participants being men, our big goal for next year's survey is already clear: we hope to get more female responses from the community. Note that 1% preferred not to disclose.
Geography
The most active countries in our survey were the United States, Germany, the United Kingdom, and Canada. In total, we had participants from 108 countries around the world!
Company Size
Out of four developers, one works solo and one in a large team of 200+ people. This means, on the other hand, that most developers work in small and medium sized companies.
Company Office vs. Remote / Home Office
More than half of developers already work from home - at least partly. And of those that work from their company's office, 57% would like to work from home.
It's safe to say that remote work is on the rise!
Actual Programming Time per Day
With all the administrative tasks that any modern job involves, it sometimes seems that not much time is left for our actual work. But there's good news from our survey: the overwhelming majority of developers spends more than half of their days actually programming!
Trivia
Superheroes
This question has bothered us for a long time: which superhero rules... really? In a tough race, Batman finally pulled Iron Man's plugs. And, in terms of heroines, Jessica Jones showed Wonder Women what a wonder she is.
Coffee Breaks
It would not have taken a survey to understand where the term "coffee break" comes from. But we now know for sure: drinking coffee is still the most popular activity when a programmer takes a break. And, while we don't know if he takes it with milk, we know that he loves to surf the web at the same time.
Gadgets
It's fair to say that almost every developer on the Mac also owns an iPhone. And, with over 80% also having an iPad or other tablet, there's no shortage of screens in our households.
Getting Up
It's always a ceremonial occasion when a cliché is proven wrong: programmers are not late risers! Well... at least, some of us aren't: about half of our participants get up before 7 a.m.! And a brave 2% even tumble up before 5 a.m. Props, really!
Technology & Languages
Development Tasks
Most developers work in one of three areas: Full-Stack Web, Mobile, or Web Frontend. Only one in ten developers specializes in either pure Backend or Desktop technologies.
Programming Languages - In Use
The most used programming languages amongst developers on the Mac are clearly Javascript, CSS, and PHP. However, with Objective-C and Swift close behind, the popularity of Apple's iOS also showed.
Programming Languages - On the Learning List
If you're looking for a gift for a programmer friend, a book on Swift should be a safe bet. It is - by far - the number one language that devs want to learn. In case it's sold out: Go, Ruby, and Python are also highly regarded.
Open Source Contribution
Here's wonderful news: two thirds of devs contribute to Open Source projects! Any skeptics should now agree that Open Source is not a niche - it's a natural force!
Development Tools
Version Control
Subversion is certainly not dead. But on the Mac, it is almost irrelevant: with 95% of people using Git, it's a clear standard in today's development toolboxes.
Code Hosting
GitHub once started the "social coding" trend - and is still the most popular code hosting platform amongst developers. A suprisingly high number of people, however, still seem to use their own solutions: one in four developers reported they're using a self-managed system to host their code - or none at all.
Unit Testing
Most programmers would probably agree that unit tests improve code quality. Nevertheless, our survey reveals a big gap between theory and reality: be it lack of time or budget, but only a minority of developers writes unit tests regularly. Three out of four devs, on the other hand, don't write unit tests or only do so rarely.
Text Editors
Sublime Text has been the dominant text editor for years. And it still is: almost half of devs still use Sublime when not coding in a special IDE. Another third of devs have a much younger competitor in their Dock: Atom.io is a very popular alternative.
Diff & Merge Tools
We've been truly surprised that almost 40% of developers don't use a dedicated diff or merge tool. Those that do seem to use either Kaleidoscope or Apple's FileMerge.
Continuous Integration
Naturally, many of our participants don't employ a Continuous Integration workflow. Those that do use a CI tool, however, seem to sing from the same hymn sheet: Jenkins is the tool of choice for almost half of Continuous Integration followers.
Deployment Tools
When it comes to deploying web projects, only few people are using a dedicated tool: almost half of our participants said they were doing deployments manually. If, on the other hand, developers are using a tool, chances are that this is part of their Continuous Integration workflow.
Productivity Tools
Task Management
A whopping third of developers uses Trello for task management. This makes it the most popular tool by far, followed by JIRA, Omnifocus, and Wunderlist.
Although, for this question, we had provided 13 tools to choose from, a lot of respondents had to select the "Other" option, telling us which other tools they were using - and how extremely diverse the area of task management is!
Bug & Issue Tracking
Developers seem to manage bugs & issues in one of three ways: using JIRA, GitHub Issues, or no special tool at all! With almost one in four developers not using a dedicated tool, a lot of text files and emails must be floating around.
Customer Support
The overwhelming majority of development teams does not use any dedicated tools to handle customer support. This is quite unexpected, given the high expectations that today's customers have and the complexity that customer support can easily grow.
On the other hand, those people that do use a customer support tool are in agreement that Zendesk is the go-to service.
File Sharing
It's probably no surprise that most teams are using either Dropbox or Google Drive to share files with their teammates and customers. More surprising is that almost one in four respondents told us that their files don't touch third-party file sharing servers: they're either using their own servers (using a solution like OwnCloud or a home-grown one) or don't use an explicit file sharing service at all.
Intranet & Documentation Platform
Many teams are sharing knowledge and documents in either Google Drive, Dropbox, or Confluence. Apart from this handful of popular choices, however, a multitude of solutions exists: from shared Evernote books to self-managed wikis everything seems to be in use.
Conclusion
With over 7,000 participants, the survey paints a detailed picture of our community.
On the one hand, a wide array of languages and tools is in use on the Mac. On the other hand, we are united in our love for coffee and gadgets!
Don't forget to sign up for next year's survey!