2019 is coming to an end and Sacha Greif and Raphaël Benitte have just published their annual report on the state of JavaScript and its entire ecosystem. Around 11 million developers are said to be using JavaScript, and while it’s hard to find everyone and ask them what they like about the language, the “State of JavaScript 2019” study surveyed more than 21,000 JS developers on their preferred frameworks, tools and features. The results showed how the JS ecosystem has evolved and what tools are most used in 2019.
The 2019 JS State Report revealed the main language frameworks, user demographics and other important data. Whether you like it or hate it, language continues to gain ground and its ecosystem continues to grow. It is essential for modern development and is the first programming language on GitHub since 2014, the Python language having taken second place this year, thus outstripping Java. Let’s take a look at what came out of the survey this year.
TypeScript is a typed superset that compiles into pure JS. 2018 and 2019 were major years for TypeScript and its adoption.
According to the study, going back to 2016, TypeScript awareness among developers was already 97%, but the interest barely exceeded 50%. In 2019, all developers who responded to the survey know what TypeScript is and an impressive 58.5% would use it again. Similarly, 89% of respondents said they were satisfied with TypeScript. It ranked first in terms of satisfaction, interest and notoriety compared to other languages that compile in JS (Elm, Rason, ClojureScript and PureScript).
When it comes to front-end frameworks and libraries, Angular and React are two of the biggest names.
Last year there was a decrease in satisfaction with Angular. This year, it continues its downward trend. About 35.8% of developers have already used Angular, but will no longer use it. In comparison, 21.9% used Angular and said they wanted to use it again. However, this percentage could perhaps change next year when the stable version of Angular v9 is released.
In the case of React, 71.7% of the developers used it and said they wanted to use it again. This is a slight increase in satisfaction compared to previous years. 2019 has turned out to be a flagship year for React. Earlier this year, npm conducted a survey that found that 63% of JS developers write React code.
JavaScript developers also appreciate GraphQL more than Redux for the data layer, and Express ahead of Next.js for the back-end. In addition, even if some developers still complain about Electron, the JS framework for designing applications for the desktop has not lost importance. Developer satisfaction with Electron increased from 93% to 86%, but overall sentiment is still higher than that of React Native (82%). Finally, Svelte is on the rise, but still obscure for many.
Source : State of JavaScript 2019
