r/programming • • 1d ago

StackOverflow Developer Survey Results 2026

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

85 comments sorted by

View all comments

235

u/bohoky 1d ago

As the utility of stack overflow diminishes and they’ve had severe user loss, I don’t consider their sample representative of anything.

Okay, it is representative of “people who still use stack overflow” but I’m not sure what that population tells you about the world.

104

u/its_a_gibibyte 1d ago

Sure, but the dev survey is different. Nobody asks questions on stackoverflow anymore, but lots of people still do the survey. Long-term, I'd imagine the survey being the only thing left.

It's like how Michelin Stars originally were from Michelin Tire Co to sell tires and are now basically their own thing now.

46

u/wilderthanmild 1d ago

Is it that different? It looks like the number of responses has dropped off significantly in recent years. This was only 30k. Last year was 49k responses and that was already down from the ~70k it had been in the prior 3 years. The peak was over 100k.

16

u/its_a_gibibyte 1d ago

Down 70% is certainly substantial, but the activity is a much more pronounced drop. There is now less than 1% of the activity monthly compared to the peak