Nowadays, developers have an abundance of options to choose from when it comes to finding information about software development and staying up-to-date. Nevertheless, their needs and preferences vary depending on where they stand on their developer journey and based on a few key characteristics. If you would like to understand what those are and how they affect developer information choices, then keep reading! In this blog post, we draw data and insights from SlashData's 27th Developer Nation survey, which was fielded in Q3 2024 and reached 9k+ developers worldwide.
Open source communities and social media are the leading resources where developers go to find information
Open source communities (43%) and social media (41%) are the leading resources for developers globally to gather information and stay up-to-date about software development, according to our data. In comparison, only 3% of developers rely on vendor-organised events, while other resources, such as meetups and hackathons, also see limited (c. 14%) interest among developers. Vendor-driven resources including official websites, newsletters and/or events, are used by ~40% of developers.
Experience is a key factor affecting information resources preferences
Experience in software development stands out as one of the main factors influencing resource decisions. Indeed, experienced developers (those with at least 10 years of experience) utilise a more diverse set of resources to get information and stay up-to-date about software development compared to developers that are just starting out and have less than 2 years of experience (utilising 3.5 resources on average vs 4.3 among experienced).
However, it is not only the breadth of resources that varies with the level of experience, but also the channel preferences. For example, experienced developers lean heavily (52% vs 32%) towards vendor-driven resources to stay up-to-date, whereas nearly half of developers with up to 2 years of experience rely on social media for their information (vs 31% of more experienced developers).
Experienced developers prefer vendor-driven resources to stay up-to-date.
The relatively high use of vendor-driven resources could reflect the fact that experienced developers have more responsibilities than their early-career peers. To explain, the pressure to ensure proper implementation and functionality can lead to a preference for official vendor materials - such as documentation, blogs, and newsletters - since these resources tend to be of higher quality and more reliable. Another reason that official resources are not so favoured among developers with limited experience could be that this kind of resources might demand better understanding of the subject matter and in some cases a deeper level of expertise, something that is also gained through experience.
On the other hand, the prevalence of social media among early-career developers, in conjunction with their limited use of a number of fairly established information channels, could be due to a lack of awareness of those resources. For example, Q&A sites and conferences/events which are generally known among developers.
Developers with little experience are also more likely to be utilising conversational AI services / chatbots than their more experienced peers (30% vs 22%). For many developers making use of conversational AI services, the combination of real-time interaction, breadth of knowledge and a “safe environment” (as you can ask basic, or even ignorant, questions without fear of judgement) are possibly compelling adoption points. These features, however, don’t seem to be particularly appealing to highly experienced developers.
Amongst the rest of information resources, the use of open source communities and Q&A sites, as well as listening to distinguished peers, are top of mind among experienced developers.
Information source preferences vary by region
Another important separating factor is the region developers are based in. There are certain regions, where reliance on information resources is limited compared with others. For instance, countries in Asia (including China and Japan) exhibit a small degree of resource utilisations, compared with other areas (3.2 on average vs 4.2 excl. Asia).
At the same time, developers within each region seem to have varying preferences in terms of which exact types of resources to use. For instance, Western European developers are significantly more likely to attend conferences or events than the rest of their peers (38% vs 25%), whereas Latin American developers show a much stronger preference for social media and following respected peers than average (59% vs 40%). Similarly, CEMA-based developers are more likely to be using official vendor resources than developers based in other regions (47% vs 40%).
In the US, official resources are used by 41% of developers, with community-driven resources (community websites, forums and groups) a close second. Importantly, maybe in light of the ongoing turbulence in the US labour market, a third of US developers prioritise education through attending seminars or pursuing training courses and workshops.
Other characteristics affecting information resource selection for software developers
In addition to experience and location, the types of projects that developers work on is another factor affecting the preferences for information resources. More specifically, involvement in different project types might require developers to use different frameworks, technologies and/or programming languages. Thus, depending on the maturity, reliability and accessibility of each tool or service they use, developers may seek to retrieve information from different channels that best match each topic of interest, in order to optimise their level of understanding.
For example, our data shows that web and backend developers, as well as those building apps/extensions for 3rd-party ecosystems, behave similarly not only in terms of their information sources preferences but also towards the number of resources that they use (around 4.2 vs 3.5), when compared with developers in other sectors. Specifically, they stay up to date using a diversified portfolio of resources following both official/vendor-based (such as docs or forums) and non-official/community-based resources (such as Q&A sites or open source communities). So, any effective outreach strategy would likely need to extend beyond official documentation and require at least some level of presence on community-based channels for these developers.
Another interesting finding is that more than one in three developers involved in ML/AI, embedded software development, or industrial IoT, are attempting to sharpen their skills through seminars, training courses or workshops, compared with just about 20% of AR/VR developers.
AR/VR developers used to be more eager for training resources (~33% of AR/VR developers in Q3 2023), broadly highlighting the current bifurcated state of the ML/AI and AR/VR sectors, as the former continues to see additional investments from companies because of the remarkable progress of generative AI models, and the latter being put somewhat on the backburner.
For the vast majority of areas discussed earlier (excl. Latin America), results remain consistent across regions, meaning that these findings cannot be attributed to geographical location effects.
More data, more insights!
If you’d like to receive more data and insights about where developers go to find information, as well as what types of content they prefer, reach out to us or explore all our research at the SlashData Research Space.
About the author
Lazaros Ioannidis
Data Analytics Manager
Lazaros has extensive experience in data analysis and research, with a background in financial markets. He holds a Master’s in Finance and is a CFA® charterholder. At SlashData he helps clients find data-driven insights to questions they must ask about their business.