Uganda’s first-ever nationwide developer survey has been released and has unveiled a lot interesting statistics. The 2019 Annual Developer Survey was conducted by Andela Uganda after stimulating conversations they had with members of Uganda’s tech ecosystem– from tech companies, government representatives, investors, bloggers to developers across the nation at various experience levels.
Top on the least of the most used programming languages was JavaScript and Python.
JavaScript is currently the most used language in Uganda’s developer community, followed by Python at 46.7% and 45.5% respectively. . This is consistent with global trends based on our previous reports.
This comes as no surprise since JavaScript is a core component of web technology. It is supported across all browsers and is executable on the client and server side (thanks to frameworks like Nodejs). Having started out as a light weight scripting language for browsers, it is now considered a general purpose language that is relatively easy for a first time learner to grasp.
Python is also a general purpose language with a simple programming syntax that reads and writes quite a bit like plain English. It is powerful and immensely versatile,allowing it to cover multiple areas and industries. It has applications ranging from Scripting, Web Development, Datascience, Artificial Intelligence, et.c. These are probably the reasons why it is the language most Ugandan developers would like to learn and it is the fastest growing language globally, according to the same survey.
Over the last few years JavaScript and Python have grown, globally, in usage and as a result, popularity. From the data, you can see that most of the junior developers, mid-level developers and a good number of the senior developers are proficient in these languages.
Arguably, Andela has played a significant role in boosting the number of developers in these languages, particularly the Junior developer numbers despite the fact that they are laying off most of them now. The company has given learning resources and guidance particularly through it’s bootcamps, the ALC program, the Women In Tech program and provided employment opportunities for software engineers.
PHP is a skill that a good percentage of senior and mid-level engineers possess at 31.1% total usage. The days for PHP are clearly ending as it was one of the most popular programming languages but it has since been replaced by the not-so-new comers, JavaScript and Python. Basing on that history, it makes sense that there are a significant number of developers with PHP experience.
Python most popular that most developers want to learn
Python is overwhelmingly the language most Ugandan developers would like to learn. It is the fastest rising programming language today, according to the TIOBE index.
JavaScript, Java and Kotlin also seem to be popular among Mid-Level developers and Junior developers. Senior Developers on the other hand seem to prefer to learn, Erlang, Go and Swift.
The report also notes that the number of people interested in learning PHP is significantly lower than people who know the language, as compared to several of the newer languages: Go, Kotlin, Ruby, Swift, where there are not as many existing developers.JavaScript and Python are clearly the dominant languages.
