Surprising Results in the 2020 Python Developers Survey

Every year, JetBrains and the Python Software Foundation conduct an online survey better to understand the state of Python's ecosystem.

In October 2020, more than 28,000 Python developers and enthusiasts from almost 200 countries/regions took the survey, and the results went out earlier this week.

While I no longer code in Python (Okteto is mostly a golang + react shop), Python was my primary language for many years (Hipchat and Elasticbox were both python-apps), so I like to stay in touch with the community. This morning I went through the results, and they are quite surprising.

Surprise #1:

40% of the developers answered that they develop with containers.

Hipchat was a python application of considerable size), and back then, dealing with virtualenvs and OS-level dependencies was painful for everyone in our dev team.

It's great to see that a good chunk of the Python community embraces containers as part of their development workflow and not just for prod. Can we move to Kubernetes now?

Surprise #2:

68% of the developers use Linux as their primary OS, followed by Windows and then MacOS

I know I'm super biased by Apple's prevalence in the Bay Area, but I was still expecting MacOS to do better here. But it is a happy surprise to see Linux take the number one position here.

I wonder if this has to do with the fact that most applications do run in Linux, and with virtualenvs having deep OS-dependencies, it's just easier to work in Linux.

Surprise #3:

Flask and Django are the top web frameworks, but FastAPI is growing fast

Flask and Django have been the "standard" web frameworks for a very long time now. It is refreshing to see "new blood" starting to rank in this category. The first time I heard about FastAPI was when Abdulazeez proposed we write a series on developing FastAPI-based applications with Okteto. And look at where FastAPI is now!

Suprise #4

Most Python developers have less than one year of programming experience

Many people see Python as "old-fashioned" or even a "dead" language. This number and the other demographics-related results in the survey prove that Python is a thriving community and keeps renewing itself.

There's also a more profound connotation. This is strong evidence that we have more and more people joining our profession and the python community. I'm all for software being an inclusive profession instead of something just for the few, so this makes me very happy. Artur, from CareerKarma, also touches on that topic here.

Suprise #5

Most Python developers live outside of the United States.

The internet is giving people everywhere access to technology and well-paying jobs. You don't need to move to Silicon Valley anymore to have access to great jobs and build a great career as a developer. It's not perfect, but we are moving in the right direction.

Conclusion

Python is alive and well. I love being surprised by surveys like this. It's a great reminder that good technology can, in fact, last for a very long time and that technology has become a truly global industry. For another take on the survey, I recommend you check MrDon's reaction to the survey (tell him I said 👋🏼).

Okteto ❤️ Python. If you're building microservices with Python, give Okteto a try. And remember, say yes to containers in dev, and no to virtualenvs 😎.

Ramiro BerrellezaCEO & Co-founder View all posts