The Nitor developer survey highlights the top technology trends for 2025

For 2025, Microsoft Teams holds the title of the most used tool – whether by necessity or enthusiasm is another question – closely followed by Slack. Meanwhile, GitHub Copilot has seen the biggest surge in adoption, proving that AI-powered coding is here to stay.

When it comes to the most liked technologies, Rust once again claims the top spot, with Renovate coming in second. On the other hand, Android has had the biggest jump in popularity, suggesting that mobile development is picking up steam.

On the flip side, AngularJS continues to reign as the most disliked, with XCode not far behind – which also saw the biggest rise in negative sentiment. Rust, however, isn’t just beloved – it’s also the most interesting language to developers, reinforcing its status as a community favorite.

So, which tools are thriving, and which ones are on their way out? Let’s dive into the results.

Languages

Let’s start with our category for programming and query languages. Python grabs the award for the biggest growth by a mile here, increasing 11 percentage points (pp) to 51%, while both Javascript and Typescript show significant drops. Still, thanks to Javascript making a bigger drop, Typescript is ahead for the first time, further showcasing that projects tend to move in the static type-checking direction.

Last year, Rust and WebAssembly took the top spots for most interesting technologies and 2025 is no different. We also note that 100% of Rust’s users enjoy working with it. An additional shoutout goes to Go for being the second most liked language in terms of percentage – 88 % of the respondents liked it.

The solid part of the bar (purple, pink, and blue) displays the share of respondents who have used the language. The share of interested users is highlighted with diagonal stripes. Finally, the label above each bar is the percentage point change in usage since 2024.

Backend

This is a category for backend frameworks and Javascript runtimes. Last year, the Express framework for Node.js was the most significant riser, but this year we can see a rather drastic decrease for it, along with Node.js itself.

Deno and Bun gained plenty of interest already last year. The same trend continues in 2025 and could well be the cause behind the decreased use of Node.js and Express.

Frontend

React is unsurprisingly still the most used in this category of frontend and meta frameworks. Still, interestingly, usage has decreased, and it also received fewer positive votes from our responders this year compared to 2024. Competitors such as Vue.js and Svelte remain more or less constant from last year, while the big increase we saw in Next.js the previous year has subsided.

The fact that the Create React App is deprecated continues to show in the survey results. The use of AngularJS has decreased, being heavily disliked, while Angular (the newer and more popular version) grows with more positive reactions.

A newcomer from last year’s survey, htmx, continues to grow here, while also showing a high interest among users.

Testing

This category encompasses both frameworks and tools. Jest takes the win again but sees a heavy drop while Playwright is closing in. The use of JUnit and Cypress show heavy drops while Robot Framework has the biggest increase, despite being heavily disliked.

A yellow star denotes an entry that has been new since last year.

Data

In the category of databases, data stores, and message brokers, most entries show setbacks in numbers. PostgreSQL remains the most used database and DynamoDB is still the most popular NoSQL database.

The biggest increase can be seen for CosmosDB while DuckDB takes the win for the most interest.

Cloud platforms

In the cloud category, we see an interesting change. As much as AWS grew in last year’s survey, it decreased by that same amount (15pp) this time. Google Cloud and Hetzner attract the most interest. Meanwhile, Verzel takes a step back despite growing a lot in the previous year – but remains highly liked.

Continuous integration

Among CI tools, all have decreased in usage since last year. However, Github Actions, which saw the most growth last year, remains the most used. Respondents like GitLab CI the most. 

Deployment and infrastructure

Last year, deployment and infrastructure was a quite stable category with only few changes compared to 2023. In 2025, we saw some major setbacks for Docker and AWS SDK, while smaller actors like Podman, Bicep, and Pulumi increased.

AI tools

This is the second consecutive year that we have included the AI tools category in the survey. As with last year, the survey instructions specified that only work-related tools should be included in the responses. 

There are, naturally, several new entries this year –with Microsoft Copilot grabbing most of the attention. The use of Github Copilot continues to grow, confirming that it is becoming a well-developed and serious tool for software development. ChatGPT’s usage among our respondents remains the same as last year.

Editors

In the category of what our respondents think about editors, VSCode decreases slightly but is still by far the most used and highly liked. IntelliJ, Nano and Eclipse decrease the most. Zed and Cursor attract the most interest.

Collaboration

Another new category from last year, and once again, we instructed our respondents to only think about what they use professionally.

Teams remain the most used but also, by far, the most disliked. Slack remains a strong competitor and has also been better received. Miro, Trello, and GitLab show the biggest declines in usage. New additions to the list, Discord and Google Meet, are likely to keep on growing in the coming year. 

Miscellaneous

In the last category, we gathered some development-related tools that do not really fit into the others. Figma takes the win thanks to Postman decreasing from last year, while newcomers like Protocol Buffers and gRPC attract much interest. Renovate stands out here as liked by 100% of its users.

Conclusion and the 2025 overall statistics

This was the fifth time we conducted the survey, using the same format that we always do. For every technology a Nitorean had used for at least ten days during the previous year, they would take a positive, negative, or neutral stance.

Additionally, we asked which technologies Nitoreans would like to use in the future, providing them with a curated list and the possibility to submit their own options. This time, we got 77 responses to the survey.  

To conclude, let us take a look at some statistics across all categories. What did people like the most, and what are they most interested in? Where do we see rapid growth? And what do people dislike the most?

Most Used

• Winner: Teams

• Runner-up: Slack

• Biggest Increase: GitHub Copilot

Teams is the most used platform – whether by choice or force is up for debate. Slack holds its ground, but the real shift is in AI-assisted coding, with GitHub Copilot seeing the biggest usage jump. 

Most Liked

• Winner: Rust

• Runner-up: Renovate

• Biggest Increase: Android

Rust continues to win hearts, and Renovate’s automation magic keeps developers happy. Android’s rising popularity suggests renewed interest in mobile dev.

Most Disliked

• Winner: AngularJS

• Runner-up: XCode

• Biggest Increase: XCode

AngularJS’s time is long past, and XCode continues to frustrate. Notably, XCode also saw the biggest rise in negative sentiment.

Most Interest

• Winner: Rust

• Runner-up: htmx

• Biggest Increase: htmx

Rust isn’t just loved; it’s what devs want more of. Meanwhile, htmx’s rise suggests a growing appetite for simpler, more lightweight web development.

Final Takeaways

Rust remains the darling of developers, AI-assisted coding is on the rise, and frustration with XCode is hitting new highs. Despite the dominance of Teams, users continue to have a love-hate relationship with it.. Meanwhile, htmx is making waves in the web dev space, and mobile development (especially Android) seems to be back in focus.

Let’s see where the trends take us next year!