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
- Table of contents
- Jamstack use-cases
- Technology
- Who builds Jamstack apps? (Demographic)
- Takeaways for GitLab
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