Rust most admired language, Stack Overflow survey says

Stack Overflow 2023 Developer Survey finds that JavaScript and Python are the most used and most desired languages, but they fall far short of Rust in satisfying their users.

Editor at Large, InfoWorld |

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For the 11th consecutive year, web development staple JavaScript was the most commonly used programming language among developers participating in Stack Overflow’s annual developer survey.

JavaScript was also the language that most developers surveyed desire, or want to use, followed closely by Python. But Rust was the language that respondents most admire, with nearly 85% of the developers who had used Rust saying they want to continue using it in the future—compared to 58% for JavaScript and 66% for Python. The next most highly admired languages were TypeScript and Zig, a C alternative.

JavaScript was followed in usage by HTML/CSS in second place and Python in third place, with Python this year overtaking SQL, which finished fourth. TypeScript took fifth place in the survey, which asked nearly 90,000 software developers worldwide about their work, salaries, and tools. The survey was conducted in early May.

In findings, PostgreSQL surpassed MySQL as the most commonly used database, Amazon Web Services (AWS) remained the most-used cloud platform, far ahead of second-place and third-place finishers Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud.

Results of the survey were published in a report on June 13. Elsewhere in the report:

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Paul Krill is an editor at large at InfoWorld, whose coverage focuses on application development.

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