How did a relatively new programming language manage to beat the competition and take the first place in the rating?
In the annual survey of developers conducted by the Stack Overflow platform, Zig unexpectedly took first place in the category "Highest paid language". This is a relatively new programming language, which is an alternative to C and debuted on the "coder scene" in 2015.
As it turned out, it is now the best choice for developers who are aimed at the highest-paying job in the field of creating applications.
According to the collected statistics, developers programming on Zig earned more than $ 103,611 in 2023. Meanwhile, last year's leader, the Clojure programming language, lost about 10% in average wages and dropped to the fifth place in the rating. In total, more than 90,000 developers participated in the Stack Overflow survey.
Next to Zig this year is the Erlang programming language with a potential earnings of $ 99,492 per year. Then there is the universal language F# ($99,311) and the open language Ruby ($98,522) — all of them are also ahead of last year's leader.
From other interesting facts: Python continues to gain popularity among developers. It even managed to bypass SQL, which moved to the 4th place in popularity.
Python also ranked first among the languages preferred by novice programmers and non — professionals-59% of students use it, compared to 37% for SQL. However, among professionals, SQL is still used more often than Python (52% vs. 45%).
Returning to the Zig language that we started with, it can be described as a "low-level" system language that aims to be simple and reliable at the expense of "easy code maintenance and readability," according to the description on the Zig Software Foundation website, which is achieved by "exclusive use of language keywords and functions to control the flow of execution."
As an alternative to C, Zig maintains a link to the existing C development culture, allowing you to migrate existing code painlessly. Ultimately, however, the goal of Zig is to completely replace C, offering comparable performance combined with an improved development experience.
The appearance of Zig at the top of the list of the highest-paid technologies is impressive, considering that in 2022 it did not appear at all in the Stack Overflow survey.
Before the rise of Zig, C already had decent alternatives — the Rust and Go languages, which, despite the rise of Zig, are still relevant. Rust, by the way, is recognized in the Stack Overflow survey as the most "admiring developers" language for the eighth year in a row.
Go, in turn, has dropped in the ranking of the highest-paid development tools from 9th to 10th place, although potential earnings have increased from $ 89,204 in 2022 to $ 92,760 in 2023. The reason, as you might guess, was Zig, which took the first line of the rating.
In the annual survey of developers conducted by the Stack Overflow platform, Zig unexpectedly took first place in the category "Highest paid language". This is a relatively new programming language, which is an alternative to C and debuted on the "coder scene" in 2015.
As it turned out, it is now the best choice for developers who are aimed at the highest-paying job in the field of creating applications.
According to the collected statistics, developers programming on Zig earned more than $ 103,611 in 2023. Meanwhile, last year's leader, the Clojure programming language, lost about 10% in average wages and dropped to the fifth place in the rating. In total, more than 90,000 developers participated in the Stack Overflow survey.
Next to Zig this year is the Erlang programming language with a potential earnings of $ 99,492 per year. Then there is the universal language F# ($99,311) and the open language Ruby ($98,522) — all of them are also ahead of last year's leader.
From other interesting facts: Python continues to gain popularity among developers. It even managed to bypass SQL, which moved to the 4th place in popularity.
Python also ranked first among the languages preferred by novice programmers and non — professionals-59% of students use it, compared to 37% for SQL. However, among professionals, SQL is still used more often than Python (52% vs. 45%).
Returning to the Zig language that we started with, it can be described as a "low-level" system language that aims to be simple and reliable at the expense of "easy code maintenance and readability," according to the description on the Zig Software Foundation website, which is achieved by "exclusive use of language keywords and functions to control the flow of execution."
As an alternative to C, Zig maintains a link to the existing C development culture, allowing you to migrate existing code painlessly. Ultimately, however, the goal of Zig is to completely replace C, offering comparable performance combined with an improved development experience.
The appearance of Zig at the top of the list of the highest-paid technologies is impressive, considering that in 2022 it did not appear at all in the Stack Overflow survey.
Before the rise of Zig, C already had decent alternatives — the Rust and Go languages, which, despite the rise of Zig, are still relevant. Rust, by the way, is recognized in the Stack Overflow survey as the most "admiring developers" language for the eighth year in a row.
Go, in turn, has dropped in the ranking of the highest-paid development tools from 9th to 10th place, although potential earnings have increased from $ 89,204 in 2022 to $ 92,760 in 2023. The reason, as you might guess, was Zig, which took the first line of the rating.
