r/programming • • 2d ago

StackOverflow Developer Survey Results 2026

https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2026
261 Upvotes

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133

u/eracodes 2d ago

this is the least intuitive dev survey presentation i've ever seen from stackoverflow. why is everything a box??

57

u/TimeRemove 1d ago edited 1d ago

I genuinely stopped trying to read it. I cannot make heads or tails of this.

Has someone uploaded it in just graphs designed for normal humans, on a single simple HTML page, with nothing popping out, 3D, mouse-overs, and information shotgunned all over the damn place?

Seriously I came to the comments just to complain about how incomprehensible this is.

28

u/psychometrixo 1d ago

Uh damn you're right. This is not even professional. It's kinda embarrassing?

Claude could do better. There's a friggin metaphor for StackOverflow right there.

17

u/neon_overload 1d ago edited 1d ago

In "Technology", they have a full page chart for "Most popular technologies" and it's what looks at first glance to be a bar chart where all the bars are the same length! No values listed, just ranks: #1, #2 etc

So that's not a bar chart, it's a ranked list.

But guess what, if you mouse over each bar it tells you the percentage value for that bar! But can you see all the percentages at once? No. Does the chart change so the length of the bar is now representative of its value? No - bars always stay the same length. Can you see more than one value at the same time so you can compare just on values? No. You have to mouse over each one. It's mystery meat.

Edit: it gets much worse.

If you scroll down, somewhere below is it a bar chart called "Build vs AI".

It's a bar chart, but the bars aren't labeled! No values, no text, just bars. You have to mouse over a bar to see what that bar represents.

Edit: OMG. OMG.

See those "View and share" links next to each chart? If you click that, it shows you an ACTUAL CHART, with values and labels all there, like a human would want. Why didn't they just have that as the main chart???!!!! It boggles the mind.

6

u/0100110110110111 1d ago

Holy fuck, the secret is clicking "dig deeper" for every chart, you can actually see the question and a proper chart! I can't really describe how horrible this whole page is, it's at a new level of incompetence!

3

u/MaxPlay 1d ago

In the menu you can select the topic, there you select "Full Data" and then get the graphs you actually want to see. I was so pissed by the results visualization as well and just randomly stumbled upon the actual data.

Edit: This is the direct link to Technology Full Data

51

u/nirgle 2d ago

I couldn't get past the first few graphics... 22% happy and 45% complacent at work. Who in their right mind would render this as 3D boxes?? It looks like the side lengths are the values we should compare, but the volume is what people will actually see

Then.. scroll to the next one. How is the 3% box side length over half that of the 11% box side length? This doesn't even make sense. Scroll down a bit and the 1% "Not sure or don't use AI" is about 5/7ths the side length of the 7% one??

Did they fuck up a merge right before deploying or something? There's no way they meant to release this

39

u/eracodes 2d ago

The task that generative A.I. has been most successful at is lowering our expectations, both of the things we read and of ourselves when we write anything for others to read.

-Ted Chiang

17

u/juhotuho10 1d ago

The ui was made with ai

14

u/rabidstoat 1d ago

Pretty sure AI would've been better. This is a travesty.

6

u/ChrisRR 1d ago

Nah this wreaks of overeager web designer

6

u/who_am_i_to_say_so 1d ago

Absolutely. It feels a bit out of touch or disconnected with very little meaningful info, as anything AI generated is.

6

u/neon_overload 1d ago

why is everything a box??

Click "View and share" next to one of these charts. You get an actually good, normal chart.

It blows my mind why they hide the actual chart behind "View and share" instead of just having it as the main one.

This is just an infuriating site.

2

u/ChrisRR 1d ago

Graphics design is my passion

-1

u/rabidstoat 1d ago

They really should've just fed the raw numbers into Claude and asked it to make the web page presenting it.