Skills, self-education and programming languages ​​for novice developers: HackerRank research

Earlier this year, HackerRank published the results of a large-scale study, which was attended by 10 thousand students - future developers. The purpose of the study was to find out how important self-education is in the course of training, and also to find out what skills students are planning to develop.

The results were interesting, with the results of the study can be found under the cut. By the way, we have already published an article about the importance of self-learning for a novice developer.

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Higher education is not enough

According to about half of the respondents, besides studying in universities, they received the necessary information independently. Even more than a third of those surveyed said that the skills they had acquired developed in the process of self-learning, and not at all thanks to the educational institution.



The main problem of higher education, according to students, is that it does not keep pace with the rapid development of technology. The curriculum becomes outdated almost immediately after its publication, so that students have to study on their own, if, of course, this is important for them.

Another nuance is that novice developers seek to master not one, but four programming languages. Asian students generally plan to study at least seven languages.

It becomes clear that a diploma or degree should not be a major factor in the assessment of students' skills. The focus of the admission of a young developer should be given to personal projects, his portfolio, and skills assessment.

YouTube is an extremely important source of information for students.

Novice developers often use YouTube to train, more often than their more experienced colleagues. The overwhelming majority - about 73% of students in the age group from 18 to 24 years old - work with video service.



StackOverflow is very actively used by more experienced developers from 25 to 34 years old (of course, representatives of other age categories also work with the service, just novice developers participated in the survey). This category refers to StackOverflow more often - the difference from beginners is about 10%.

The demand for connoisseurs of JavaScript is growing

As it turned out, most often employers want to get developers who study JavaScript and related frameworks. This demand is associated with the active transition of the industry to dynamic web pages, where 95% of all applications are written in JavaScript.



Approximately 48% of employers from around the world are looking for JavaScript specialists. And only 42% of novice developers claim to know this language. The greatest shortage of such personnel in India and Canada. In the US and the UK, by contrast, JavaScript specialists are sufficient.

The problem is that in many universities this programming language is not included in the curriculum - it and its ecosystem change very quickly, educational institutions simply cannot maintain such a pace.

Ruby, Python and JavaScript - Most Popular with Students

All three languages ​​interest the vast majority of students. Beginner developers plan to study them on a mandatory basis. Newbies also do not forget about the C language, since low-level programming languages ​​help in learning new ones.

And, of course, frameworks

AngularJS, React, Node.js and Spring are the most popular frameworks among employers. Their knowledge requires the vast majority of companies. And the shortage of specialists is very noticeable, because it is just these frameworks that are poorly studied in universities. The basics, of course, are given, but the practice is minimal. There is nothing to be done. Students need to master the frameworks themselves, in addition, companies should tighten the hired specialists.

Professional growth is above all

The research results show that the most important work points for novice developers are:

• Professional growth and mentoring.
• Remote work, flexible schedule.
• Interesting projects.

Then good colleagues, corporate culture, surcharges follow.

Concluding the article, it is worth saying that every beginner developer can make a conclusion for himself. As for employers, it is clear that now the “crust” is not at all the most important thing to which attention should be paid (although almost no one does this anymore). The most important moments are knowledge, experience, portfolio.

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