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This is the second year Delphi is listed in the very large StackOverflow survey and results for the language are better than last year, even if mixed in some areas.
The Delphi programming language is officially listed in the most recent StackOverflow developers surveys. It was present last year and it is there also this year (this time along with the RAD Studio IDE, in the specific category).
The survey offers a good insight of the developer’s world, with many general questions worth a look. Here I’ll focus on the technical section, listed at https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2022/#technology-most-popular-technologies
Top ranking languages last year were JavaScript, Python and Java, followed by TypeScript. This year TypeScript is third, ahead of Java. Delphi had 2.1% of the votes last year, while it is at 3.25% this year with 2,311 votes. It is a bit higher (3.51%) among professional developers. While not among the top programming languages, it is a very interesting result and it shows it remains actively used in the industry. Let me be clear that the increase most likely shows a change in the demographic of the developers who took the survey, not a growth in Delphi’s popularity since 2021, but it gives an idea of its real usage among developers.
It is a bit odd, though, that in terms of IDEs, RAD Studio has a lower percentage than Delphi as a language: “RAD Studio (Delphi, C++ Builder)” has 2.69% of the votes of a category clearly lead by Visual Studio Code and Visual Studio.
Another interesting tidbit is in the “Loved vs. Dreaded” category, which shows Delphi towards the top of the list with 65% of the positive votes. Last year it was in the bottom part of the list, well below 50%. RAD Studio is also towards the top of the IDEs in this rating, way above Visual Studio. The not-so-positive tidbit is the median salary for Delphi developers, which is towards the bottom (but not much below C++ or C#), I guess this is partially due to the many Delphi developers in developing countries with lower salaries than the US.
In other areas, it is interesting to notice the growth of PostgreSQL (the top database among professional developers) and the continued leadership of AWS (which almost doubles Azure and Google Cloud).
Overall, this is a very interesting read, and even if I don’t think the data can be considered conclusive, this is certainly a good survey not tied to a vendor or a specific community of developers, and in this respect a better indication compared to other similar surveys. It’s good to see Delphi in a nice spot in the StackOverflow survey!
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You’re right: A single, global, median salary doesn’t tell us a great deal. You’d really need to know where each respondent was and put out separate distributions for each major economic area. Otherwise you’re just saying that what’s popular in India or Vietnam isn’t as well-paid as what’s popular in Europe or the USA – which we kinda knew already.
Viva Delphi (and RAD Studio, or course)…
Marco, you say that Delphi is in a “nice spot”, yet it took the “most dreaded” title as the least-desired language of all. More users would prefer to use COBOL than use Delphi! I don’t see how you can spin that into a positive sign.
Joseph, I don’t know what data you are looking to. Delphi was very low in the “most dreaded” last year, but in 2022 is it among the top ones with around 35% negative votes — along with C# and others. What is low is the “want”, but this is possibly affected but the fact Delphi is not popular and talked about, many developers don’t even know about it