7 ms·

State of Software Engineering in 2020

94 points by soygul 7y ago

agentultra 7y ago
Nice work, a lot of effort and research. In addition it might be worth checking out the Software Engineering Body of Knowledge [0] maintained by the IEEE as well. [0] https://www.computer.org/education/bodies-of-knowledge/software-engineering https://www.computer.org/education/bodies-of-knowledge/softw...
collyw 7y ago
This seems like a crappy version of the Stack Overflow survey, with less information overall.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
diggan 7y ago
Everyone always list the "top programming languages" or the "fastest growing" ones. I'd like to see the opposite, the "fastest losing/shrinking" ones, would be a interesting list to see which languages people are suddenly using less off.
- leonidasv 7y ago
  TIOBE usually provides this information.
  - diggan 7y ago
    Thanks, haven't heard about TIOBE before. Is this the complete listing? https://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index/ https://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index/ Seems also just to care about the top languages and their growth/shrink rate, while is interested, doesn't necessary mean it's the fastest shrinking languages overall. Thanks for sharing that resource though.
- mdgrech23 7y ago
  you can infer this from graph - it's ruby.
  - diggan 7y ago
    No, I think ruby would be the fastest shrinking language of the top languages. I want the fastest shrinking language of all of them, not just the top ones.
    - rafiki6 7y ago
      I'm curious what you would be looking for in that data. Growth rate is relative. So my view of it is if a programming language has 100,000 users but another one has 10,000 users, a 2% reduction of users in one is a lot more meaningful in one over the other. One indicates a severe reduction in popularity, whereas another could just be a blip over time. Again, this isn't meant to be antagonistic. I'm genuinely curious what you intend on doing with stats overall rather then top languages.
      - diggan 7y ago
        Not looking for anything in particular really, just curious. Both absolute and relative numbers would be interesting to see. For example, if a language has 10 users and 5 stops using it, that's interesting. If a language has 10000 users and 5000 disappears, that's also interesting. If a language has 3 users and 1 stops using it, that's too interesting.
evmar 7y ago
"TypeScript adds a great deal of complexity both in tooling and dependencies, and I do not think that it is worth it." The subjective parts of that statement are the author's opinion and fine enough, but I am confused by the "dependencies" part. TypeScript is a single self-contained dependency. Especially in the context of the larger web ecosystem where to do almost anything else you do need a million dependencies, I find this remark pretty confusing.
- soygul 7y ago
  Reference is to the type definitions that you mostly need separately for your dependencies: https://github.com/DefinitelyTyped/DefinitelyTyped/tree/master/types https://github.com/DefinitelyTyped/DefinitelyTyped/tree/mast... Obviously this is not obligatory. Also I agree, the statement is not clear so I'll add above point to the article.
  - mikealva 7y ago
    Honestly, it's hard listening to you ramble against Typescript. Adding types to my projects has helped tremendously in reducing bugs.
pxtail 7y ago
Damn, end of the year already? huh, time flies...
- iamricks 7y ago
  Soon we will be seeing "Top programming languages to learn in 2021"
christiansakai 7y ago
What does it mean for non programmers and future of economy for non programmers? I refuse to bow to the notion that everyone should learn to code or become programmers because trucking jobs will be gone.
- throwawayjava 7y ago
  As white collar automation starts to hit hard over the next 5-10 years, the number of desk jobs will massively decline. Also, most of the remaining people who work desk jobs will be doing some sort of programming. > I refuse to bow to the notion that everyone should learn to code or become programmers... Why? Most programming isn't as hard as people seem to think. I used to think that a perhaps some really smart middle schoolers can learn enough about programming to build a simple CRUD-based web app: a bit of Python or PHP, just enough SQL (the idea of tables, columns, rows, and cells; SELECT, UPDATE, and DELETE statements), and just enough HTML/Javascript. However, after doing a few semester-long middle school enrichment activities with randomly (not self) selected students, I am now relatively certain that EVERY "normal" middle schooler can learn enough Python, SQL, and HTML/Javascript to build a CRUD web app. > ...because trucking jobs will be gone. Driving a truck is quite a bit more difficult than people seem to think. Frankly, I'm fairly confident that truck drivers will be better off than your average white collar worker, even if trucking is completely automated. In the world where "everyone at a desk does some programming", any properly educated person within a std.dev. or two of average intelligence will be fine. The only question is whether there will be enough work to go around.
  - Someone 7y ago
    ”any properly educated person within a std.dev. or two of average intelligence will be fine.” I don’t think that is true even today. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/68–95–99.7_rule https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/68–95–99.7_rule: ”in a normal distribution […] 68.27%, 95.45% and 99.73% of the values lie within one, two and three standard deviations of the mean” So, your claim is that only the bottom (and, possibly top) 2.5% of the distribution need to worry. That corresponds with IQs of below 70/above 130 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_quotient https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_quotient) Also (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_quotient#Job_performance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_quotient#Job_perf...): ”The US military has minimum enlistment standards at about the IQ 85 level. There have been two experiments with lowering this to 80 but in both cases these men could not master soldiering well enough to justify their costs”.
ryanmarsh 7y ago
The "Top Programming Languages" slope-graph with gradient is chart-junk and makes my eyes bleed. There are spurious emotional comments throughout. However, it is sad and somewhat surprising to see South America and Africa so far behind. Who is surprised that the continent of Africa lags behind? How could anyone, at this point, be surprised by the struggles faced by people across the continent of Africa?
- soygul 7y ago
  Those two combined have a population of 1.6B. Obviously one would expect them to be behind but having less than 1/3rd of contributions from Europe alone. That is unexpected to me.
cuddlecake 7y ago
As a personal anecdote, I found that changing career to carpentry would likely improve the state of engineering for me personally. Not quite sure though, IoT would surely ruin my day eventually.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
williamdclt 7y ago
There's interesting data but the personal opinions seem weirdly shallow. --- "I was predicting that once all good features of TypeScript end up in JavaScript itself, it would be discarded just like CoffeeScript" There's almost no "feature of Typescript" apart from typing. We have "?." and "??" now, but that's almost it? Building features on top of JS has always been a non-goal. Also, "My thoughts on TypeScript did not change, of course" - why "of course"? It's nothing obvious, and revising your opinion is always wise
- soygul 7y ago
  I would expect more things (especially on typing and classes) to be ported to JS. That's what I meant. At least, private/static fields, optional chaining & null coalescing (as you pointed out), default parameters are now in JS (almost). I'll add them to the article to make it more clear.
  - diggan 7y ago
    Personally, I'd prefer it if both typing and classes was not in JS, as the problems they solve can also be solved in other ways. Now I already lost the battle around classes but if types somehow becomes mandatory in JS proper, I'd probably leave JS behind me. Now, mandatory typing will never happen in JS and I already kind of left JS behind for ClojureScript, so guess I'm in luck there.
einpoklum 7y ago
It looks like this guy is "looking for the penny under the lamp-post". To him, FOSS = stuff on GitHub.

94 points by soygul 7y ago

Nice work, a lot of effort and research. In addition it might be worth checking out the Software Engineering Body of Knowledge [0] maintained by the IEEE as well. [0] https://www.computer.org/education/bodies-of-knowledge/software-engineering https://www.computer.org/education/bodies-of-knowledge/softw...

collyw 7y ago

This seems like a crappy version of the Stack Overflow survey, with less information overall.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

diggan 7y ago

Everyone always list the "top programming languages" or the "fastest growing" ones. I'd like to see the opposite, the "fastest losing/shrinking" ones, would be a interesting list to see which languages people are suddenly using less off.

leonidasv 7y ago
TIOBE usually provides this information.
- diggan 7y ago
  Thanks, haven't heard about TIOBE before. Is this the complete listing? https://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index/ https://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index/ Seems also just to care about the top languages and their growth/shrink rate, while is interested, doesn't necessary mean it's the fastest shrinking languages overall. Thanks for sharing that resource though.
mdgrech23 7y ago
you can infer this from graph - it's ruby.
- diggan 7y ago
  No, I think ruby would be the fastest shrinking language of the top languages. I want the fastest shrinking language of all of them, not just the top ones.
  - rafiki6 7y ago
    I'm curious what you would be looking for in that data. Growth rate is relative. So my view of it is if a programming language has 100,000 users but another one has 10,000 users, a 2% reduction of users in one is a lot more meaningful in one over the other. One indicates a severe reduction in popularity, whereas another could just be a blip over time. Again, this isn't meant to be antagonistic. I'm genuinely curious what you intend on doing with stats overall rather then top languages.
    - diggan 7y ago
      Not looking for anything in particular really, just curious. Both absolute and relative numbers would be interesting to see. For example, if a language has 10 users and 5 stops using it, that's interesting. If a language has 10000 users and 5000 disappears, that's also interesting. If a language has 3 users and 1 stops using it, that's too interesting.

evmar 7y ago

"TypeScript adds a great deal of complexity both in tooling and dependencies, and I do not think that it is worth it." The subjective parts of that statement are the author's opinion and fine enough, but I am confused by the "dependencies" part. TypeScript is a single self-contained dependency. Especially in the context of the larger web ecosystem where to do almost anything else you do need a million dependencies, I find this remark pretty confusing.

soygul 7y ago
Reference is to the type definitions that you mostly need separately for your dependencies: https://github.com/DefinitelyTyped/DefinitelyTyped/tree/master/types https://github.com/DefinitelyTyped/DefinitelyTyped/tree/mast... Obviously this is not obligatory. Also I agree, the statement is not clear so I'll add above point to the article.
- mikealva 7y ago
  Honestly, it's hard listening to you ramble against Typescript. Adding types to my projects has helped tremendously in reducing bugs.

pxtail 7y ago

Damn, end of the year already? huh, time flies...

iamricks 7y ago
Soon we will be seeing "Top programming languages to learn in 2021"

christiansakai 7y ago

What does it mean for non programmers and future of economy for non programmers? I refuse to bow to the notion that everyone should learn to code or become programmers because trucking jobs will be gone.

throwawayjava 7y ago
As white collar automation starts to hit hard over the next 5-10 years, the number of desk jobs will massively decline. Also, most of the remaining people who work desk jobs will be doing some sort of programming. > I refuse to bow to the notion that everyone should learn to code or become programmers... Why? Most programming isn't as hard as people seem to think. I used to think that a perhaps some really smart middle schoolers can learn enough about programming to build a simple CRUD-based web app: a bit of Python or PHP, just enough SQL (the idea of tables, columns, rows, and cells; SELECT, UPDATE, and DELETE statements), and just enough HTML/Javascript. However, after doing a few semester-long middle school enrichment activities with randomly (not self) selected students, I am now relatively certain that EVERY "normal" middle schooler can learn enough Python, SQL, and HTML/Javascript to build a CRUD web app. > ...because trucking jobs will be gone. Driving a truck is quite a bit more difficult than people seem to think. Frankly, I'm fairly confident that truck drivers will be better off than your average white collar worker, even if trucking is completely automated. In the world where "everyone at a desk does some programming", any properly educated person within a std.dev. or two of average intelligence will be fine. The only question is whether there will be enough work to go around.
- Someone 7y ago
  ”any properly educated person within a std.dev. or two of average intelligence will be fine.” I don’t think that is true even today. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/68–95–99.7_rule https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/68–95–99.7_rule: ”in a normal distribution […] 68.27%, 95.45% and 99.73% of the values lie within one, two and three standard deviations of the mean” So, your claim is that only the bottom (and, possibly top) 2.5% of the distribution need to worry. That corresponds with IQs of below 70/above 130 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_quotient https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_quotient) Also (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_quotient#Job_performance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_quotient#Job_perf...): ”The US military has minimum enlistment standards at about the IQ 85 level. There have been two experiments with lowering this to 80 but in both cases these men could not master soldiering well enough to justify their costs”.

ryanmarsh 7y ago

The "Top Programming Languages" slope-graph with gradient is chart-junk and makes my eyes bleed. There are spurious emotional comments throughout. However, it is sad and somewhat surprising to see South America and Africa so far behind. Who is surprised that the continent of Africa lags behind? How could anyone, at this point, be surprised by the struggles faced by people across the continent of Africa?

soygul 7y ago
Those two combined have a population of 1.6B. Obviously one would expect them to be behind but having less than 1/3rd of contributions from Europe alone. That is unexpected to me.

cuddlecake 7y ago

As a personal anecdote, I found that changing career to carpentry would likely improve the state of engineering for me personally. Not quite sure though, IoT would surely ruin my day eventually.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

williamdclt 7y ago

There's interesting data but the personal opinions seem weirdly shallow. --- "I was predicting that once all good features of TypeScript end up in JavaScript itself, it would be discarded just like CoffeeScript" There's almost no "feature of Typescript" apart from typing. We have "?." and "??" now, but that's almost it? Building features on top of JS has always been a non-goal. Also, "My thoughts on TypeScript did not change, of course" - why "of course"? It's nothing obvious, and revising your opinion is always wise

soygul 7y ago
I would expect more things (especially on typing and classes) to be ported to JS. That's what I meant. At least, private/static fields, optional chaining & null coalescing (as you pointed out), default parameters are now in JS (almost). I'll add them to the article to make it more clear.
- diggan 7y ago
  Personally, I'd prefer it if both typing and classes was not in JS, as the problems they solve can also be solved in other ways. Now I already lost the battle around classes but if types somehow becomes mandatory in JS proper, I'd probably leave JS behind me. Now, mandatory typing will never happen in JS and I already kind of left JS behind for ClojureScript, so guess I'm in luck there.

einpoklum 7y ago

It looks like this guy is "looking for the penny under the lamp-post". To him, FOSS = stuff on GitHub.