Zig has topped an annual Stack Overflow survey in the category of highest-paid programming technology, making the relative newcomer to the scene a solid investment for developers who are looking for gainful employment in application development.
Developers programming in Zig—an all-purpose language that offers an alternative to C—earned upwards of $103,611 in 2023, according to the Stack Overflow 2023 Developer Survey. The language, an active project started by Andrew Kelley in 2015, knocked last year’s top earner Clojure ($96,381) down to No. 5 in the category. Stack Overflow polled more than 90,000 developers for the survey, which has been published now for 13 years.
The concurrent programming language Erlang came in second, with an earning potential of $99,492, followed by universal programming language F# ($99,311), and open-source language Ruby ($98,522)—all sitting above 2022’s No. 1 in the category.
Python continued to show growth among developers this year, replacing SQL as No. 3 on the list of most commonly used languages among all respondents, while SQL dropped to fourth, which was Python’s position from last year.
Python also placed first as the language that non-professional programmers or those learning to code prefer to use, with student developers using Python more than SQL (59% vs. 37%). However, professional developers still tend to use SQL more than Python (52% vs 45%).
Zig’s upward mobility
Zig is a so-called “low-level” language for systems development aimed at simplicity and reliability by promoting “code maintenance and readability,” according to its description on the Zig Software Foundation website. It does this by “making all control flow managed exclusively with language keywords and function calls,” according to the site.
In line with its role as an alternative to C, Zig maintains some connections with the existing culture of C software development, allowing for painless migration of existing C software. However, ultimately the goal of Zig is to replace C and offer comparable performance coupled with an improved development experience.
Zig’s appearance at the top of the highest-paid technology list is impressive, especially given that it didn’t even appear at all on the Stack Overflow developer survey for 2022.
Indeed, before Zig gained popularity, C already had worthy alternatives in the form of programming languages Rust and Go. Despite Zig’s ascendance, those languages also remain relevant, with the former of earning the distinction for the eighth year in a row of most admired language in Stack Overflow’s 2023 survey results. This means that more than 80% of developers using Rust said they want to use it again next year.
Go, meanwhile, dropped a spot in the highest-paid technology category, going from No. 9 to No. 10 even though its earning potential rose from $89,204 in 2022 to $92,760 in 2023. The open-source, statically-typed language has Zig and its role at the top of the category to blame as the reason for slipping down a spot.