JavaScript/TypeScript

A vast majority of frontend is built on it

Python

Dominant in AI/ML, data science, automation, scripting

Java

#1 in enterprise backend, Spring ecosystem

C#

.NET ecosystem, enterprise backends, Windows software, cloud services and game development

Go

Cloud infrastructure, networking, CLI tools and distributed systems

Rust

Modern alternative for C/C++ (software where memory safety and performance matter)

PHP

Web backend development, especially WordPress and Laravel apps, popularity is on decline

C/C++

Systems programming, operating systems, game engines, embedded software, popularity is on decline

Kotlin

Primary language for Android

Swift

Primary language for iOS/macOS

Bash/Shell

Linux automation

React

Dominant UI library/ecosystem

Angular

Enterprise/full-featured frontend framework

Vue.js

Simple & approachable JS framework

Svelte

Compiler-based UI framework, produces lightweight apps

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Largest cloud platform with the broadest service ecosystem

Google Cloud Platform (GCP)

Good for data engineering, AI/ML pipelines, and Kubernetes workloads

Microsoft Azure

Default for hybrid cloud and Microsoft-centric enterprise tech stacks

PostgreSQL

Open-source relational database; strong SQL features, extensibility, and reliability

MySQL

Classic time-proven database

SQLite

Embedded, zero-config database engine; runs inside mobile apps, browsers and edge runtimes

Microsoft SQL Server

Mostly used by enterprise

Oracle DB

Mostly used by enterprise

MongoDB

Document-based NoSQL database; flexible schema and easy horizontal scaling

DynamoDB

Major cloud-native NoSQL database

Cassandra

Distributed wide-column database designed for very large-scale workloads

Neo4j

Graph database

InfluxDB

Popular purpose-built database for time-series data and monitoring

Prometheus

Standard metrics/time-series database for cloud-native monitoring

TimescaleDB

PostgreSQL extension optimized for time-series workloads

ClickHouse

High-performance column-oriented OLAP database for large-scale analytics

Elasticsearch

Distributed search and analytics engine

OpenSearch

Open-source search and analytics engine derived from Elasticsearch

Redis

In-memory data store supporting caching, key-value storage, streams, pub/sub and more

Memcached

Simple distributed in-memory cache

Kafka

Distributed event streaming platform, built for massive scale and high-throughput logs

RabbitMQ

Reliable message broker, flexible routing for asynchronous task queues

ActiveMQ

Message broker, popularity is on decline

Datadog

Cloud observability platform for metrics, logs, traces, and dashboards

New Relic

Application performance monitoring and observability for distributed systems

Splunk

Enterprise log management and machine-data analytics platform

Claude

Consistently tops charts, but expensive. Agentic tool - Claude Code

ChatGPT

Consistently tops charts, but expensive. Agentic tool - Codex

DeepSeek

Best price to quality ratio. Agentic tool - DeepSeek Harness

GitHub Copilot

AI coding assistant deeply integrated with GitHub

Gemini

Middle of the road, okay performance, okay cost. Agentic tool - Gemini CLI

Kimi

Decent performance for lower cost. Agentic tool - Kimi Code

Electron

Web-tech desktop framework, rich ecosystem, heavy resource usage

Tauri

Lightweight, secure, and resource-efficient

nginx

Dominant web server, reverse proxy and load balancer

HAProxy

High-performance TCP/HTTP load balancer and reverse proxy

Traefik

Cloud-native reverse proxy and ingress/router

Caddy

Modern web server and reverse proxy with automatic HTTPS

GitHub Actions

Widely used CI/CD platform tightly integrated with GitHub

GitLab CI

Popular choice for self-hosted DevOps stacks

Azure Pipelines

Microsoft's CI/CD platform, widely used in enterprise environments

Jenkins

Still used, but popularity is on decline

VS Code

Dominant code editor, extensions turn it into full-blown IDE

JetBrains IDEs

Popular language-specific IDE family (e.g. IntelliJ IDEA for Java)

Visual Studio

Major IDE for .NET/C++/Windows development

Cursor

AI-first code editor

Playwright

Modern cross-browser browser automation and end-to-end testing

Selenium

Still used, but on decline due to modern alternatives

Puppeteer

Chrome/Chromium automation

Google Analytics

Most used web analytics platform

Adobe Analytics

Enterprise-grade web analytics and customer analytics

Matomo

Open-source, privacy-focused alternative to Google Analytics

k6

Modern developer-friendly load testing tool; scriptable with JavaScript

Gatling

High-performance load testing tool built around Scala

Locust

Python-based load testing tool for simulating large numbers of users

Apache JMeter

Heavy, XML-driven, usage is on decline

REST

Dominant architectural style for HTTP APIs

GraphQL

Query language and API runtime allowing clients to request specific data

gRPC

High-performance RPC framework commonly used for service-to-service communication

WebSockets

Persistent bidirectional connection for real-time communication

Terraform

Industry-standard tool for provisioning and managing infrastructure

OpenTofu

Open-source Terraform fork and drop-in alternative

Ansible

Agentless server configuration, software deployment and automation

Pulumi

Infrastructure as code using general-purpose programming languages

Elastic Stack

Elasticsearch + Logstash + Kibana ecosystem for log collection, search and analysis

Grafana Loki

Log aggregation system designed to work with the Grafana ecosystem

Fluent Bit

Lightweight log/telemetry collector and forwarder

Vector

High-performance observability data pipeline

Swagger

OpenAPI-based API documentation and interactive testing

Postman

Popular all-in-one tool for API development and testing

Insomnia

Lightweight API client for development and testing

Bruno

Open-source, Git-friendly API client

Git

Version control

HTML

Browser markup

CSS

Browser styling

SQL

DB query language

Linux

Server OS

Docker

Containerization

Kubernetes

Container orchestration

Markdown

Text markup

Windows

Most popular general purpose OS

macOS

Popular amongst frontend specialists & designers

Linux

Popular amongst backend/devops folk

The Pragmatic Programmer

Covers writing adaptable code, career responsibility, and tooling

Code Complete

Practical guide to writing, designing, debugging and maintaining high-quality software

Design Patterns

Classic catalog of reusable object-oriented design patterns

System Design Interview

Explains real-world distributed architectures

Designing Data-Intensive Applications

Databases, distributed systems, data processing, replication, partitioning and consistency

A Philosophy of Software Design

Focus on 'deep modules' with simple interfaces to manage system complexity

The Phoenix Project

Novel about DevOps, IT operations, bottlenecks and organizational transformation

Fundamentals of Software Architecture

About architectural styles, component identification, soft skills, and evaluating trade-offs

Working Effectively with Legacy Code

Provides mechanics for safely introducing tests into messy, coupled codebases

Clean Code / Clean Architecture

Controversial books, but still popular

Refactoring

Cataloged techniques to improve internal code structure without altering behavior

The Mythical Man-Month

Classic essays on software project management, estimation and team organization

GitHub

Collaborative development platform

Reddit

r/programming, r/webdev, r/devops, r/ExperiencedDevs...

Hacker News

Social news aggregator

Stack Overflow

Q&A network

dev.to

Blogging platform