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Jamstack Community Survey Key takeaways

This is a selective slice of statistics I found noteworthy or related to GitLab. The full survey is available here

Table of contents

Jamstack use-cases

The purpose of Jamstack sites

Most common applications Jamstack devs work on: Personal pages, B2B software, Ecommerce, Consumer Software, Informational websites.

Traffic of Jamstack sites

Jamstack Applications are big. Most are intended for thousands of visitors. This should be taken with a grain of salt, as this data is self-reported by the developers.

Developer specialization

There is a weak correlation between website size and developer specialisation: The bigger the website they work on, the less likely the developer is a Full Stack developer:

Jamstack site industries

In terms of industries, Jamstack Apps are located in non tech industries. With GitLab Pages being primarily used by software/tech teams, this is an area where GitLab can catch up a lot.

Technology

Languages

Developers love Typescript! Javascript is the most-used (and not going anywhere). Up-and-coming are Go, Swift, Rust and Elixir

Popular Frameworks

The by far most widely used one is React and people are still quite happy with it. Next.js and Vue are on its heels, as developers like them more and adoption is strong.

In the up-and-coming area are Vite, Nuxt, 11ty and Svelte.

On the down-and out (rarely used and not particularly loved) are Hugo, Jekyll and Angular.

People can't quite get away from (but like to) jQuery, Express and Gatsby

Minor Frameworks

Most notable in the minor frameworks (<10% usage) section is the rise of SvelteKit with a big satisfaction score and a great adoption for its age.

Backend technologies

On the backend, Functions-as-a-service is becoming equally as important as containers. GitLab has to revisit Serverless Functions.

Architecture primary concern

Biggest priority for devs is performance, followed by uptime and security.

Who builds Jamstack apps? (Demographic)

Jamstack community is getting younger. Jamstack is increasingly the way web development is being taught. Developer Experience levels are decreasing!

Younger engineers are increasingly geographically diverse:

Takeaways for GitLab

What do these stats mean for GitLab and the Jamstack direction?

  • Performance improvements should have the highest priority
  • With GitLab Pages being mostly used by technical industries, we're leaving a large market of non-technical industries untapped
  • Serverless functions are very important to users, we should revisit an offering
  • Jamstack sites are big. In order to stay competitive we need to develop for Jamstack sites that have thousands to millions of users
  • The frameworks GitLab has previously focused on (Hugo, Jekyll, even Gatsby) are irrelevant to users and will become even more so
  • By focusing on younger, less experienced users we can strengthen our position in non-us/eu markets
Edited by Janis Altherr