About this survey
Yearly programming puzzles at Advent of Code, since 2015! Community-run (unofficial) survey since 2018, and since 2021 the results are published here! Data available under the ODbL license on GitHub.
Bar chart showing that the top 2 remains Python 3 (>41%) followed by Rust (>16%). JavaScript dropped several spots from 2023, after (in order) C++, C#, Go, and even Java. TypeScript is just behind JavaScript. A whopping 22.7% of "Other..." answers. Python 2 is shown in the graph at a tiny %, only because the earliest survey years gave it a much larger percentage. Toggle data table for all the data.
Bar chart showing IDE's used. VSCode dropped 4% down to 44.1% since 2023. Neovim keeps rising and is in firm second place, further taking away from vim's share. When enabling older years, especially 2018, a stark change is seen, amongst which the demise of "Atom". And, 18.4% of "Other..." IDE's were used. Toggle data table for all the data.
Bar chart showing a small decline in Windows usage in 2023 and 2024, but an equal uptake in WSL usage in those years. On the whole, Windows, Linux, and macOS have roughly equal shares. Oh, and the data table has plenty of cool "Other..." answers too! Toggle data table for all the data.
⚠ Note: In 2023 'WSL' (along with 'Android', 'iOS', and 'IPadOs') became built-in options, heavily increasing their representation.
Bar chart showing "Reasons for participating": unchanged again from 2023, it's extremely curious and interesting that the top responses are this stable over the years! The value is not in the chart here, really: but in the data table. Toggle data table for all the data. And gasp at the heartwarming, disconcerting, pleasing, fun, and lovely responses folks wrote!
Note: "For Santa!" was not a default answer in the survey until 2020 onwards.
Bar chart showing a clear trend over the years: more respondents are "not interested" in global leaderboard participation, but less people seem to attribute this to the timezone being problematic. As might be expected (and can be seen in the full data table), in 2024 many "Other..." answers quote the rise of AI tools as a reason for not participating in the Global Leaderboard. Toggle data table for all the data.
Bar chart showing no big surprises: number of private leaderboards stays the same over the years. Same as last year, most folks sit in 0 or 1 private leaderboard, about 15% in 2 leaderboards, 6% in 3 leaderboards, 2% in 4 leaderboards, and 3% in 5 or more leaderboards. Toggle data table for all the data.
This stacked bar chart clearly shows that (logically) this survey is biased towards people who participate in 2024 in December itself. This year each question had a link to your stars for that year, so data might be a little more accurate. It's fun to see that more folks went back to do 2015 than 2016 and 2017: "you've gotta start at the beginning"?
Line chart with 2024 highlighted, showing the number of survey responses per day (cumulative). The huge boost around December 14 can probably be attributed to the boosts on Social Media from Eric Wastl, who has a rather large reach (cheers! :D). And: thank you to everyone filling out the survey, you're the best!!
Bar chart showing feelings survey respondents felt aligned with. About 62% of y'all indicate not using AI at all. The tongue-in-cheek option "Ugh, not again with the AI" attracted a whopping 41% of y'all. Almost 10% of you "Will submit to our new AI Overlords". On the more serious end the subject is polarizing, but still weighing a tad towards "it's bad for AoC". Toggle the data table to be amazed at the hundreds of custom responses folks gave!
Note: red indicates negative sentiments, yellow neutral sentiment, and green positive sentiment. The blues are "Other..." style answers.
Bar chart showing sentiments towards AI, quite similar to results from 2023. (Because of personal circumstances and time constraints, the 2024-specific question ended up being the same as 2023.)
⚠️ Just like the Advent of Code organizers, I was unprepared for how (much) AI would be involved this year, or how vocal some folks would get in their discourse and the "Other..." answers. Moderating the "Other..." answers a bit to keep things civil will require quite a bit of time, so the initial 2024-results will release without detailed "Other..." options. Hope y'all understand!
Note: red indicates negative sentiments, yellow neutral sentiment, and green positive sentiment. The blues are "Other..." style answers.