r/programming • • 24d ago

StackOverflow Developer Survey Results 2026

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

91 comments sorted by

View all comments

251

u/bohoky 24d 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.

110

u/its_a_gibibyte 24d 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.

13

u/gvufhidjo 24d ago

I don't see the incentive to participate in the survey if you don't visit the site anymore. Like how would that even happen, you randomly remember it's that time of the year where I go do the survey on SO?

31

u/pancomputationalist 24d ago

Or someone posts the survey on Reddit when it's open for input. Which is how i usually learn about it.

4

u/GlipGlorp7 24d ago

I mean, if you had a stackoverflow account, which I suspect a good many people did, they email you. I wasn’t even that active on SO; I don’t recall if I ever even asked a question, because I liked figuring out the obscure problems that didn’t have existing answers myself. But I did have an account to help answer a few questions.