Node.js Survey: AWS Cloud Continues to Be the Favorite Target for Deployment Node.js developers who deploy production code continue to love Amazon Web Services Inc.’s (AWS) cloud. This is according to a new survey. The Node.js Foundation’s third annual survey found that AWS was the preferred place to deploy code for production. It seems to be growing for development. It also revealed that most Node.js developers prefer on-premises infrastructure to actual development, as opposed to AWS, which was still in second place in the survey last year. The percentage of respondents who reported using AWS for development increased from 18 percent to 21 percent last year. Respondents also used AWS Lambda extensively, according to the survey report. These findings were presented in the 2018 Node.js Users Survey Report. This is the third consecutive year that the Node.js Foundation sought input from 1,626 respondents on JavaScript’s use. According to the report, “Amazon Web Services is followed closely by on-premise infrastructure.” However, a significant amount of users also deploy to Heroku and DigitalOcean, Google Cloud Platform, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform. These deployment findings closely mirror those from last year. This year, 39% of respondents used the Ubuntu Linux distro for production, compared with 42% last year. Debian-based Linux distros ranked second in both years. This year, 41% of respondents used macOS for deployment, compared with 46% last year. This year, Windows jumped to second place in the development OS category (24%) and Ubuntu (21%) was third. Last year, Ubuntu was at 20 percent and Windows 18 percent. [Click on the image to see a larger version.] Node.js Deployment targets (source: Node.js Foundation). JavaScript is the most popular programming language. JavaScript is the most popular choice.

A third of respondents are using ES2017 or higher — three times more than last year.

APAC users use less languages than others, but those who are not from traditional development areas use more languages, especially C++ and C.

Most people expect to increase their Node.js usage over the next 12 month. This is a good sign. Most growth will come from outside the US/CA, especially in Latin America and EMEA.

Other languages are also expected to increase in popularity, including Rust and Go as well as JavaScript.

Ruby usage has declined and Ruby users are more likely to predict that Ruby usage will decrease than increase over the next 12 month.

PHP is less popular in the US/CA and among “other developers”; many who use it predict a decrease in usage over the next 12 month.

Swift and Go may be stealing the focus of Node.js users. Many of those who plan on maintaining/decreasing with Node.js will increase their use of Swift or Go in the next 12 month.

[Click on the image to see a larger version.] These are some highlights from the 2018 survey:

Web apps are still the most popular use of Node with 85 percent of respondents saying they use Node to create these applications. 43 percent of respondents use Node to create enterprise applications.
Node.js integrates with many technologies, including front-end frameworks, databases and load balancing.
Most users anticipate an increase in Node.js use, especially in Latin America and EMEA.
Babel is the most popular transpiler. However, back-end, full-stack and ‘other’ developers are increasing their use Typescript. Webpack seems to be consolidating its position among Module Bundlers in most regions and areas of development.
It is becoming more importa