Report: 75% of devs indicate that participating in API economy is ‘top priority’

According to a recent report by RapidAPI, a majority (75.5%) of developers indicated that participation in the API economy is a top priority for their organization now or in the near future, up from 58% in 2020.

The need for a cohesive API strategy continues to grow as companies prioritize digital transformation efforts. Leveraging APIs to drive innovation is a crucial factor for organizations, and underscored by the report’s findings that 90.6% of developers will use APIs more or the same in 2022 as they did in 2021.

The report found that the developer talent shortage will continue to have an impact on companies going into 2022. Developers cited a lack of engineers or team members as the top challenge for 2022 (56.8%), and 54% of developers are open to switching jobs.

The report also looked at developers’ preferences when it comes to programming languages and tools. While JavaScript continues to be the most used (71.6%) and preferred (51.9%) programming language, for the first time TypeScript entered both the top five most used (19.5%) and the top five most preferred (12.1%). The number of developers using REST and SOAP APIs in production fell slightly in 2021 (down 3.7% and 1.4%, respectively) as the number of developers using GraphQL and Async APIs increased.

“The State of APIs Developer Survey 2021” included responses from more than 2,200 individuals from 130 countries and across different roles, with a majority of respondents reporting that software development is part of their job or education.

Read the full report by RapidAPI.