Published on the 23/08/2022 | Written by Heather Wright

And searching for answers, and answering questions, are just as bad… 

The majority of professional developers are spending up to an hour a day searching for answers, as knowledge silos impact their ability to work efficiently. 

62 percent spend more than 30 minutes a day searching for answers or solutions to problems

The 2022 Developer Survey from Stack Overflow, which surveyed more than 70,000 developers, both professional and learners, shows 68 percent of professional developers are encountering those knowledge silos at least once a week with some reporting 10+ instances a week. Among those deemed people managers, the incidents of knowledge silos increases, with 73 percent reporting at least one a week.  

Nearly half of all respondents said knowledge silos were preventing them from getting ideas from across the organisation, and that waiting for answers to questions often causes interruptions and disrupts their workflow. 

It doesn’t stop with knowledge silos either, with 62 percent spending more than 30 minutes a day searching for answers or solutions to problems, and 25 percent spending more than an hour each day. For a team of 50 developers, that amounts to between 333-651 hours of lost time per week across the entire team.

All that asking has a flip side too, with 46 percent saying they’re spending more than 30 minutes a day answering questions, and 32 percent of people managers spending more than an hour a day just answering questions. 

Those results hint at a likely wider problem of poor staff retention – and that’s an issue that, in resolution, throws up its own challenges, with widespread concern about the length of time to onboard. More than 48 percent, regardless of whether they were a people manager or independent contributor, felt onboarding took their organisation ‘a very long time’ or ‘somewhat long time’. And while independent contributors might not be directly managing others, 62 percent say they’re involved in supporting new hires.

The number of developers learning to code online is increasing up from 60 percent last year to 70 percent this year. 

Meanwhile, in this day and age of diversity concerns, the report has some telling figures, with a whopping 93 percent of professional developers surveyed identifying as male, and just 4.8 percent female and 1.4 percent non-binary. Among those learning to code, woman accounted for eight percent, and 88 percent, men; with 2.6 percent preferring not to say, highlighting the very slow move to more diverse workgroups. 

On the technology front, for the tenth year, JavaScript topped the list as the most commonly used programming language – at least for professional developers. For those learning to code, HTML/CSS, Javascript and Python are almost tied as the most popular languages.

Rust was the most loved language for the seventh year, with 87 percent of developers saying they want to continue using it. Rust also tied with Python as the most wanted technology, with TypeScript running a close second. 

As to the distinction between most loved, and most wanted, most wanted is for those who aren’t already developing with the language or technology, but have expressed an interested in doing so. 

And the most dreaded? Well that ‘honour’ fell to MatLab, inching just ahead of Cobol – though on the ‘want’ list, there were a (very) few wanting MatLab, at 0.71 percent, or 519 respondents. Cobol had 263 respondents keen to work with it in the coming year. Delphi had the fewest, at 161 or 0.23 percent.

If it’s money you’re after, however, it’s Clojure which remains the highest-paid language to know. Chef developers are the highest paid, but Chef is also the most dreaded ‘other tool’. Big data and data streaming skills are also well compensated while developers with colocation experience are reaping greater rewards than their cloud-only counterparts.

Looking beyond programming languages, Docker and Kubernetes took the top spots for both the most loved and most wanted tools, with the desire to start using Docker not slowing down – it increased from 30 percent last year to 37 percent this year for wanted. 

Last year Git was ‘a fundamental tool to being a developer’. This year sees Docker staking its claim, increasing from 55 percent to 69 percent, just ahead of npm on 66 percent, for professional developers.

It’s a different story, however, for those learning to code, for whom npm is far and away the most popular tool at 70 percent, followed by Docker at 31 percent. Those learning to code are more likely to be using 3D tools than professional developers, with Unity 3D (23 percent vs eight percent for professional developers) taking third spot for those learning to code, and Unreal Engine (nine percent vs three percent) in sixth spot.

The survey included nearly 1,500 respondents from Australia and 440 from New Zealand.