To give aspiring developers an idea of what software languages to focus on in order to start a career, Tunga created the TOP 20 of most in-demand software skills for 2021.
It was made following extensive market research into what businesses are currently looking for and what they are willing to pay. By doing so, companies can build their software team with experienced African developers within days.
The TOP 20 IT Software Skills for 2021
- Perl
- Ruby
- C++
- Python
- SQL
- C#
- Java
- Javascript
- C
- Bash/Shell/Powershell
- Scala
- PHP
- TypeScript
- HTML/CSS
- VBA
- Swift
- R
- Objective-C
- Go
- Kotlin
Good impression
Ernesto Spruyt, CEO of Tunga, about the TOP 20 he says that unleashing talent and a good starting point for aspiring developers, is to know what to focus on.
For our TOP 20, we made an equally-weighted ranking based on the number of outstanding job postings, salary level and salary momentum. These three aspects together should give a good impression of what software skills are the most in-demand in the coming year.
“The outcome is very interesting, to say the least. Both Perl and Ruby are languages that are generally considered doomed, but the pressure is still high. It is possible that the negative press they got, made it unattractive for developers to take them up as new skills, creating a relative scarcity in the process. So even though in the long run they might not be the most popular languages, they are now!”
Vacancies, salaries, demand
First Tunga looked at the times languages appeared in job vacancies, which ranged from around 2.500 postings with Golang to 84.000 for Python. SQL came in just behind Python, but in many cases was demanded in combination with a host of other skills.
The number three was Java. The next step was to look at what companies were willing to pay a developer. Hiring a Scala, Go or Perl developer is the most expensive. Whereas Go might not be literally among the most in-demand software skills, it is definitely among the relatively most scarce skills.
Where absolute demand is high, generally speaking, the supply of developers proficient in those languages is also substantial, so salary levels say something about relative demand.
Demand for Perl, VBA and C++ developers has the most momentum – they are becoming more difficult to source and therefore more expensive.
About the research
Most available data concern the US, but because many tech trends are initiated there it was assumed they are a good representation of what happens globally – cross checks confirmed this assumption.
The research was based on data from StackOverflow, Dice and Indeed.com.
The annual StackOverflow survey contains loads of interesting data, including current developer salary levels. Dice produces an annual tech salary report that contains elaborate information about current salaries and how they relate to the past year.
Indeed can be used to track the number of vacancies that mention a certain language. Data was gathered on twenty software languages/skills filtered out of the StackOverflow survey based on perceived popularity and available data.
They are Bash/Shell/Powershell, C, C#, C++, Go, HTML/CSS, Java, Javascript, Kotlin, Objective-C, Perl, PHP, Python, R, Ruby, Scala, SQL, Swift, TypeScript, VBA.
