Devpost, the self-described “home for hackers” formerly known as ChallengePost has released data from nearly 10,000 student programming projects that finally answers the question: When the going gets tough and the competitive coders get coding, which language do they choose?
You can find the answer to that question here—hint: rhymes with HTML/CSS—along with the full report from Devpost. JavaScript came in second, and Python in third, but what caught our eye were the top payments APIs. After more than 150 hackathons involving more than 13,000 hackers, which payment APIs were most in demand?
- Venmo
- PayPal
- Stripe
- Braintree
- Blockchain
It was no surprise to see Finovate and FinDEVr alums among the pack. Venmo is a Finovate alum, having demonstrated its Venmo Touch technology with Braintree at FinovateSpring 2013. And PayPal, Blockchain and Braintree all presented at the inaugural FinDEVr 2014 conference for developers in San Francisco last fall. Braintree will be back again this year for FinDEVr 2015 in San Francisco.
Devpost’s survey of student hackers is based on the 2014-2015 academic year. The data set included 13,281 student hackers from 160 student hackathons featuring 9,898 individual projects.
In a note about the report, the authors emphasized that sponsorship matters when it comes to being “the one that gets used” by builders. “If you show up and participate,” the authors wrote, “hackers will use your technology.”
“We looked at the 20 companies that sponsored two or more student hackathons in 2014 and had 50 or more overall projects tagged with their technologies,” the authors wrote. “Nineteen of those companies had a higher prevalence of tags when they sponsored, including 11 tagged more than twice as often when they sponsored.”
As ChallengePost, the platform served as a place for online competitions in general. But as the number of software and technology competitions began to grow, the company shifted direction to focus on “software-developer hackers.”
“Hackers make stuff and exhibit imagination, ingenuity, self-confidence, and a collaborative spirit,” wrote Brandon Kessler, company founder and CEO. “That’s who we are too, and we wanted to support the community around it.”
DevPost has powered more than 700 in-person hackathons, and partnered with companies like Uber, AT&T and IBM to help build developer communities. The company was founded in 2009 and is headquartered in New York City. The student report was DevPost’s first, but the company plans to publish rankings periodically, and encourages hackers to tag the technologies they use.
*Post updated to add FinDEVr 2014 alum, Blockchain.
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