TypeScript on the rise, PHP matures – JetBrains shows ecosystem change

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The new edition of the JetBrains Developer Ecosystem Survey 2025 shows how strongly artificial intelligence (AI) has established itself in developers' daily lives. The results are based on 24,534 responses from developers in 194 countries, collected between April and June 2025.

85 percent of respondents regularly use AI tools, and 62 percent rely on at least one AI assistant or AI-powered code tool in their daily work. Only 15 percent have worked completely without AI so far, often due to data protection or quality concerns. Of those who use AI, almost 90 percent report clear time savings—a fifth even save a whole workday per week by using assistants. 68 percent expect employers to soon specifically demand AI competencies. Nevertheless, skepticism remains: many criticize the fluctuating quality of generated code, lack of contextual knowledge, or fear that their skills might atrophy.

Language Trends: TypeScript is growing rapidly, PHP is losing momentum

According to the JetBrains Survey, TypeScript is growing the most and has become the big winner among programming languages in recent years. Rust, Go, and Kotlin are also growing steadily. In contrast, the use of PHP, Ruby, and Objective-C continues to decline. In terms of income, the study shows an interesting detail: Scala developers achieve the highest salaries, even though they represent only a small portion of the total developer community.

According to the JetBrains Language Promise Index, which evaluates the growth, stability, and future attractiveness of languages, TypeScript, Rust, and Go are considered the most promising technologies in 2025. JavaScript, PHP, and SQL, on the other hand, have reached a mature phase where little significant growth is expected. The most frequently desired languages for developers to learn or use are Go (11 percent), Rust (10 percent), Python (7 percent), Kotlin (6 percent), or TypeScript (6 %), as the following graphic shows:

Productivity Redefined

Instead of purely technical metrics like build times and deployment speed, the understanding of productivity itself is coming into focus in 2025. More than half of respondents cite interpersonal factors such as communication and clarity of goals as crucial. 66 percent do not see existing metrics as a realistic representation of their actual performance. JetBrains concludes from this that productive teams today need not only better tools but also better collaboration.

Global Differences in the Job Market

The sentiment in the developer job market varies greatly by region: while 57 percent in Japan view the situation positively, two-thirds find it difficult in Canada. Challenges also change with experience—juniors struggle with entry barriers, senior developers with coordination and context switching. Despite all this, the passion for the profession remains unbroken: more than half continue to write code even after work—apparently for relaxation.

PHP 2025: Stable, modern, and AI-Driven

The supplementary report State of PHP 2025 highlights how the PHP ecosystem continues to evolve 30 years after its inception. 1,720 developers from 194 countries participated in this part of the survey. 89 percent are already working with PHP 8.x, with older versions gradually disappearing. Laravel dominates with 64 percent, followed by WordPress and Symfony. Around 58 percent do not plan to switch to other languages, so PHP remains a constant in the web.

PHP 8.5, FrankenPHP and Caddy: betterCode() PHP 2025

On November 25, the betterCode() PHP will take place, an online conference by iX and dpunkt.verlag in cooperation with thePHP.cc. Interested parties can learn about the programming language in presentations and discussions. Discounted tickets at the early bird rate are available via the conference website.

95 percent of PHP developers have already tried AI tools, and 80 percent use them regularly. While ChatGPT is losing market share, specialized solutions like GitHub Copilot and JetBrains AI Assistant are gaining traction. In 2025, JetBrains also introduced Junie, its AI coding agent, which is integrated directly into the IDEs and works contextually. Technical tools like PHPStan and modern testing frameworks are also being used more frequently; the trend is clearly towards more quality, automation, and productive teamwork.

(mdo)