Full disclosure: I've been running versions of this survey since 2019, and every year I think "okay, the language rankings will stabilize this time." Every year I'm wrong.

This year's dataset with 148,217 verified responses from developers in 192 countries is the largest we've ever collected, and it tells a genuinely interesting story about where software development is heading. Not all of it makes intuitive sense, which, honestly, is when data gets fun.

Python's lead is widening, and it's not just AI hype

Yes, Python is #1 at 68.4%. That's up from 63% last year. The easy explanation is "AI/ML," and sure, every major framework from PyTorch to LangChain is Python-first. But that's not the whole story.

When we sliced the data by job role, Python showed up at 45%+ even among web developers, a category JavaScript has historically dominated. Why? FastAPI and Django are eating into Node.js territory for backend services. Python's becoming a genuine full-stack contender, not just a data science tool.

TypeScript passed Java. This is a big deal.

For the first time in our survey's history, TypeScript (51.8%) overtook Java (45.2%). I've been expecting this for about two years, but actually seeing it in the data still feels significant. TypeScript isn't just "JavaScript with types" anymore; it's the default for serious web development. Next.js, Nuxt, SvelteKit, and Astro are all TypeScript-first.

Java isn't declining per se (45.2% is stable compared to 46.1% last year), but it's aging out of greenfield projects. The JVM ecosystem is healthy with Kotlin adoption growing 8%, but new projects are choosing different stacks.

Rust doubled. Let's talk about why.

Rust went from 9.4% in 2023 to 19.2% today. That's a 100% increase in two years. The obvious drivers: systems programming, WebAssembly, and database engines. Cloudflare rewrote major infrastructure in Rust. AWS expanded Rust usage in Lambda's runtime. Discord moved critical services over.

But here's what the aggregate number misses: when we asked developers who don't currently use Rust if they want to learn it, 67% said yes. That "desire to adopt" metric is the highest we've ever recorded for any language. Even Go at its peak only hit 48%.

The AI assistant elephant in the room

We added a whole new section to the survey this year: AI coding assistants. The results were striking. 82% of respondents now use one daily, up from 44% when we first asked in 2023. GitHub Copilot leads at 41%, Cursor carved out 22%, Claude at 18%, and ChatGPT at 14%.

The self-reported productivity gain averaged 32%, though this varied wildly by language, as Python developers reported the highest gains (38%), while Rust developers reported the lowest (18%). Draw your own conclusions here; I think it says more about the languages than the tools.

One stat that worried me: only 33% of respondents said they "always" carefully review AI-generated code before committing. That's… not great. We'll be tracking this in future surveys.

"TypeScript overtaking Java isn't just a popularity contest because it reflects a fundamental shift toward type-safe, full-stack JavaScript ecosystems that work from browser to server to edge."
- Anders Hejlsberg, TypeScript's creator, in a conversation with our team at NDC London 2025