UK developers are most contented in the world, finds report

The UK has the happiest IT programmers in the world, according to French coding platform CodinGame.

The Montpellier-based firm released its annual IT developers survey, which asks programmers about their work and the industry at large.

Over 20,000 IT developers from 120 different countries took part in the survey, answering questions on how and where they learnt to code, which language they use and how happy they're in their jobs.

When asked how much they love their work on a scale of one to 10, globally 66.4% answered between 7 and 10. The UK came out on top with its developers averaging of 7.40 for happiness. Canada and the US came second and third respectively.

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With regard to the tools of the trade, the most popular languages were Javascript (65.46%), Java (62.74%) and Python (57.13%) with over half the respondents saying they knew how to code in all three. But familiarity doesn't necessarily breed love: Java and Javascript also featured high on a list of most-dreaded languages with 23.93% of developers saying they hated Java and 21.29% for Javascript.

One in three developers considered themselves self-taught coders, according to the survey, learning via free resources such as textbooks and online tutorials on sites like YouTube. However, the majority (58.2%) say they honed their skills at either university or school with none simply learning "on the job".

The studies continue when they leave full-time education as coding, like any language, is a skill that needs constant practice. YouTube, again, features heavily in this regard as 60.8% of the developers surveyed said it is their favourite medium to bone up on coding. Online tutorials and blogs proved very popular with the participants with a massive 64.9% saying they boost coding knowledge this way.

What's more, one in three programmers said they keep up their skills up by coding for more than one hour a day in their own time.