State of CSS 2019 Survey Results: Top Frameworks Rank Low in Satisfaction, JavaScript Proficiency is on the Rise

The first ever State of CSS survey results have been published. The data includes responses from more than 11,000 developers in 135 countries. Respondents identified themselves as male (84.71%), female (9.9%), non-binary/third gender (0.86%), and “prefer not to say” (2.62%).

Sacha Greif and Raphaël Benitte, creators of the survey, said it’s skewed towards early adopters, since the sample size is a fairly small selection of the overall CSS developer community. Greif and Benitte also created the State of JS survey, which is where 31.5% of respondents heard about the CSS survey, so the data is also slanted towards the “back of the front-end,” developers who use JavaScript in their front-end work. They concluded that this data is a good preview of where the mainstream side of the ecosystem will be a few years from now.

The majority of respondents indicated that they are fairly confident about their back-end proficiency, with 62.49% identifying themselves as possessing intermediate or advanced backend skills. This trend sets the bar higher for developers who are looking to present a competitive skill-set in the CSS workforce.

The results seem clearly bent towards the JavaScript-proficient segment of CSS developers, with a whopping 80.54% rating their JavaScript proficiency at Intermediate to Expert level.

The summary includes a highly detailed look at different CSS-related technologies, such as preprocessors, methodologies, frameworks, and CSS-in-JS, with differently colored segments representing whether developers have favorable or negative opinions on each.

The results contain data visualizations showing which CSS features and technologies developers know about and/or have used in their work. Flexbox (94.4%) and Grid (54.4%) are among the most widely used layout tools. The frameworks section revealed some surprising results, with a few of the lesser-known frameworks, like Tailwind, Bulma, PureCSS, and Tachyon ranking highest in interest and satisfaction. The most well-known frameworks, Bootstrap and Foundation, fall at the bottom of the satisfaction scale.

These results are fairly representative of early adopters of new technologies in the CSS ecosystem, covering features and frameworks that are not yet mainstream. Greif and Benitte predict that even though CSS seems to be evolving slowly, mastering the newer technologies will become more important for developers who want to remain competitive.

For a more detailed look at other areas, such as typography, interactions, animations, and even what pseudo CSS selectors and form-related selectors developers use in their work, check out the full range of results at 2019.stateofcss.com.