Eclipse Community Survey 2014 Results

We have published the results of the Eclipse Community Survey 2014. Thank you to everyone who participated in the survey this year. The complete results and data are available for anyone to download [xls] [ods].

As in other years, I think the results provide an interesting perspective on what tools software developers are using and the type of applications they are building.  Here are some key highlights from the results this year:

1) Git #1 Code Management Tool. Git has finally surpassed Subversion to be the top code management tool used by software developers. A third of developers (33.3%) report they use Git as their primary code management tool compared to 30.7% using Subversion. Subversion continues to show a downward trend from previous years when it was used by more than half the developers. Of note, 9.6% claim GitHub is their primary code management tool so the prevalence of overall Git usage is becoming dominate.

2) Maven and Jenkins Key Tools. For Build and Release tools, Maven and Jenkins continue to be key tools used by developers. Of interest is the growth of Gradle from 2013 (4.5%) to 2014 (11%).

3) Top 3 Application Servers. Tomcat (32.6%), JBoss (11.8%) and Jetty (7.2%) continue to be the top 3 application servers.

4) Java 8 Adoption. Java 8 was released in March 2014 and already 9.2% of Java developers have migrated to Java 8 as their primary version of Java. 59.2% are using Java 7 but close to a quarter are using Java 6 or before.

5) Majority of Developers Use JavaScript. More and more software developers use multiple languages to develop software. Due to the Eclipse biased of the survey, Java is not surprisingly the top primary language. However, when asked what other languages developers might use, JavaScript stands out to be a popular language with a the majority of developers (56.2%) claiming it as a secondary language.

6) Developers Experimenting With Open Hardware. The Internet of Things (IoT) and Open Hardware have become important industry trends in the last couple of years. Over a third (35.7%) of software developers are spending their own personal time learning about devices like the BeagleBone, Arduino and Raspberry Pi.

Thanks again to everyone who participated in the survey. I hope everyone finds the results of interest.