The 2018 State of JavaScript survey is out. They got 20,000…

First up: JavaScript flavors. There's TypeScript at 47% adoption, a tad higher than npm's own survey results (which said 46%). npm's survey is coming up again soon and will ask about TypeScript in a lot more detail.

I really, *really* like SoJ's "would not use again" question, which lets people who've abandoned a tech self-identify. This is noticeable in the graph above with Flow users -- 41% of people who've used Flow say they wouldn't use it again.

Now JavaScript frameworks. It's been a full year since npm's survey, so these numbers differ from ours in the directions I expected:
React 65% (vs. 60%)
Vue 29% (vs. 24%)
Ember 5% (vs 4%, I was expecting a bigger rise)

But there's a shocker in here: Angular.

npm's survey had Angular at 40% last year and SoJ has it at either:
- 58% (if you include those who don't want to use it again)
- 24% (if you count only those who like it)
Since npm's question didn't ask if they intend to *continue* using it I think that might explain this.

I don't think I need to make clear that this is a weird trend. How to explain it?
Maybe: lots of people in 2017 wanted to try Angular, tried it, and almost none of them liked it.
Or maybe: new users are still liking it but old users are churning out?

Over in data layers, Apollo comes in at 11% - it was at 6% in January, and this is exactly the growth I would expect. GraphQL overall is in at 20% with very few abandoners so far. It remains the tech I expect people to dig into in 2019.

The only other note here is that Redux at 47% is a lot higher than npm's data would suggest, but we didn't ask about Redux directly, so this more of a note to myself about improving our survey and translating our downloads data into real usage.

63% of respondents say they would like to learn GraphQL. Damn!

Back-end frameworks. Several interesting tidbits here:
- Next.js has an enormous "want to learn" pool, great sign for them
- 62% of Meteor users and 72% of Sails users would not use them again, ouch

We need to stop calling Express a framework, it's too big. It's bedrock.

In Native App land, Electron is lower here (20%) than npm's data (24%) but still, 24% of people is just enormous adoption, amazing work there. React Native is almost as big at 19%. Some really tough abandonment numbers there for Ionic and especially Cordova.

This is some really great data, well-presented. Congratulations to @sachagreif, @benitteraphael and @michaelrambeau on their hard work here. It's really nice to see this survey and npm's largely in agreement, since it can give us all more confidence in the accuracy of our data.

P.S. I am still puzzling about the Angular data. Apparently in 2018 more people (34%) decided to stop using Angular than were using it at all in 2017 (29%). It's not impossible that lots of people tried it but didn't like it in 2018 but it's a really surprising outcome.

The 2018 State of JavaScript survey is out. They got 20,000 responses and have some delicious, delicious data. I'mma thread in some highlights:

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