New Node.js Foundation Survey Reports New “Full Stack” In Demand Among Enterprise Developers

SAN FRANCISCO, April, 12, 2016 — The Node.js Foundation, a community-led and industry-backed consortium to advance the development of the Node.js platform, today announced the availability of its first ever Node.js User Survey Report.

With over 3.5 million users and an annual growth rate of 100 percent, Node.js is emerging as a universal platform used for web applications, IoT, and enterprise. The Node.js User Survey report features insights on emerging trends happening in this massive community that serves as a leading indicator on trends like microservices architectures, real-time web applications, Internet of Things (IoT). The report paints a detailed picture of the technologies that are being used, in particular, with Node.js in production and language preferences (current and future) for front end, back end and IoT developers.

Key findings from the Node.js Foundation survey

Node.js and Containers Take Off Together

Both Node.js and containers are a good match for efficiently developing and deploying microservices architectures. And, while the surge in container use is relatively new, 45 percent of developers that responded to the survey use Node.js with the technology. Other container-related data points:

• 58 percent of respondents that identified as IoT developers use Node.js with Docker.
• 39 percent of respondents that identified as back end developers use Node.js with Docker.
• 37 percent of respondents that identified as front end developers use Node.js with Docker.

Node.js — the Engine that Drives IoT

JavaScript and Node.js have risen to be the language and platform of choice for IoT as both are suited for data intensive environments that require parallel programming without disruption. JavaScript, including Node.js and frameworks, such as React, have become the de facto choice of developers working in these connected, device-driven environments with 96 percent of IoT respondents indicating they use JavaScript/Node.js for development.

“Data about developer choices is catnip for developers,” said James Governor, RedMonk co-founder. “In this survey, the Node.js Foundation identifies some interesting results, notably about languages programmers are using alongside Node.js and IoT demographics.”

These environments are challenging, and the survey revealed that on average, IoT developers using Node.js have more experience than their front end and back end counterparts with more than 40 percent of IoT developers surveyed having over 10+ years of development experience.

Additionally, although Docker is a server technology, many IoT developers (58%) are using Node.js with Docker compared to only 39 percent of back end developers. This metric is significant as it means that the new IoT world also is quickly adopting containers and microservices.

Node.js Becoming Universal Platform

The full stack is no longer “front end and back end,” but rather “front end, back end and connected devices,” which is a combination of everything from the browser to a toaster all being run in JavaScript and enabled by Node.js. The survey revealed that 62 percent of respondents are using Node.js for both front end and back end development, and nearly 10 percent are using Node.js for front end, back end, and IoT development.

Node.js Pervasive in Enterprises

Node.js is increasingly used in the enterprise, and used within huge enterprises like PayPal, Go Daddy, Capital One, and Intel. The survey found:

• More than 45 percent already using the Node.js Long Term Support release (v4) geared toward medium to large enterprise users who require stability and high performance.
• Of those who haven’t upgraded, 80 percent report definite plans to upgrade to v4, with half of respondents planning to do so this year.
• Strong interest in enterprise tooling among 34 percent of tech leaders.

Full “MEAN” Stack Explodes

The popularity of real-time, social networking and interactive game applications is pushing a new stack among developers. The MEAN stack is able to handle lots of concurrent connections and extreme scalability, which these applications demand. Node.js, in combination with MongoDB, Express, AngularJS, allows developers to tackle the needs of front end and back end development. Not surprisingly, all of these technologies were commonly used alongside Node.js. Express, cited the most, is used by an average of 83 percent of developers.

Popularity of JavaScript and Node.js

JavaScript and Node.js were popular among back end, front end, and IoT developers. Other languages, beyond JavaScript, that were popular for all three developer types included PHP, Python and Java. However, when looking to the future, back end, front end and IoT developers planned to decrease their use of Java, .Net and PHP (PHP averages a 15% decrease) and increase the use of Python and C++.

About the Survey

The survey was open for 15 days, from January 13 to January 28, 2016. During this time, 1,760 people from around the world completed the survey. Seventy percent were developer's, 22 percent technical management and 64 percent run Node.js in production. Geographic representation of survey covered: 35 percent from United States, 22 percent from Continental Europe, 6 percent India, and 6 percent from United Kingdom with the remaining respondents hailing from Asia, Latin America, Africa, Russia and the Middle East.

Additional Resources:

• Node.js Foundation User survey infographic
• Report summarizing Node.js Foundation User Survey 2016

About Node.js Foundation

Node.js is used by tens of thousands of organizations in more than 200 countries and amasses more than 3 million active users per month. It is the runtime of choice for high-performance, low latency applications, powering everything from enterprise applications, robots, API engines, cloud stacks and mobile websites.

The Foundation is made up of a diverse group of companies including Platinum members Famous, IBM, Intel, Joyent, Microsoft, PayPal and Red Hat. Gold members include GoDaddy, NodeSource and Modulus/Progress Software, and Silver members include Apigee, AppDynamics, Codefresh, DigitalOcean, Fidelity, Google, Groupon, nearForm, New Relic, npm, Opbeat, RisingStack, Sauce Labs, SAP, StrongLoop (an IBM company), Sphinx, YLD!, and Yahoo!. Get involved here: https://nodejs.org/.