The Python Software Foundation (PSF), in association with tools vendor JetBrains, has published the eighth Python Developer Survey, with more than 30,000 contributors, making it the biggest yet.
The actual survey took place in late 2024, and the raw data we downloaded has closer to 29,000 responses, but the discrepancy could be from the PSF filtering the results to remove spam and under-18s. 72 percent of respondents use Python for work, the rest being educational or hobbyist developers.
There are strong indications of growth in Python's popularity – in line with the latest Stack Overflow survey that shows a seven percent increase in usage. 50 percent of respondents have less than two years of professional coding experience, and 39 percent have started with Python within the last two years, showing that there are many new Python developers.
PSF Fellow Michael Kennedy observed that only 15 percent of developers use the latest generally available version, 3.13. If everyone upgraded, he claimed, it could save millions of dollars in cloud usage bills and be good for the planet because of improved efficiency. Further, since most developers use containers (53 percent) or serverless (28 percent), upgrading should be easy.
Developers, on the other hand, cite the fact that the version they are using meets all their needs (53 percent), compatibility issues (27 percent), or lack of time (25 percent) as reasons not to upgrade.
In fact, Python developers are relatively quick to upgrade. The most widely used version is 3.12 (35 percent), first released in late 2023, followed by 3.11 (21 percent). This is a similar pattern to last year, when versions 3.11 and 3.10 were the most used. It is also hard to compute efficiency savings with confidence, since many Python applications use native code add-ons.
Web development accounts for significant Python usage, though slightly behind data science
Python is used almost as much for web development (46 percent) as for data analysis (48 percent), with both rising slightly from the previous year, though adding in other data science usage such as machine learning (41 percent) and data engineering (31 percent) likely means that this still dominates. That web dev slice is significant, though.
Digging deeper, Django (35 percent) and Flask (34 percent) are near-equals in web frameworks, while FastAPI (38 percent) has risen sharply from the previous survey (29 percent). As an API framework, FastAPI is not directly comparable with the other two leaders, but its growth is worth noting.
Another tool with rapid growth is uv, a Rust-based tool positioned as a replacement for the pip package manager. The uv project claims to be from ten to a hundred times faster than pip as well as being more comprehensive. It has jumped to 11 percent usage.
In tools, the bad news for sponsor JetBrains is that Microsoft's Visual Studio Code (48 percent) has increased its popularity lead over PyCharm (25 percent), the company's own IDE. Last time round, it was 41 percent and 31 percent respectively.
Despite the surging usage of Python, the PSF reported earlier this month that it has paused its grants program because of a lack of funds, driven by the rising cost of running the PyCon US event as well as foundation costs. The 2024 annual report shows that, while revenue rose slightly from 2023 to 2024, expenses increased by more, leading to negative net income of $1,462,000 (in 2023 it was -$225,000).
The PSF supports Python in various ways, including hosting the PyPI package repository, distributing Python, running events, and employing CPython developers.
What is the solution? "The PSF needs more support and resources from the corporations that are built on and making revenue from Python," states Marie Nordin, community communications manager.®
Source: The register