Report: What’s helping devs thrive — and what’s still holding them back?
A look at how culture, tooling, and habits are shaping the developer experience today, per Docker’s 2025 State of Application Development Survey.
Great culture, better tools — but developers often still feel stuck. From pull requests stuck in review to tasks without clear estimates, the inner loop remains cluttered with surprisingly persistent friction points. This year’s data maps the disconnect between what developers need, where they’re blocked, and how better tooling and cultural support can keep velocity on track.
Here are six key insights into developer experience and productivity from Docker’s annual State of Application Development Survey, based on responses from over 4,500 industry professionals.
1. How devs learn — and what’s changing
Self-guided learning is on the upswing. Across all industries, fully 85% of respondents turn to online courses or certifications, far outpacing traditional sources like school (33%), books (25%), or on-the-job training (25%).
Among IT folks, the picture is more nuanced. School is still the top venue for learning to code (65%, up from 57% in our 2024 survey), but online resources are also trending upward. Some 63% of IT pros learned coding skills via online resources (up from 54% in our 2024 survey) and 57% favored online courses or certifications (up from 45% in 2024).
Note: For this year’s report, we surveyed over three times more users across a broader spectrum of industries than for our more IT-focused 2024 report.
As for how devs prefer to learn, reading documentation tops the list, as in last year’s report — that despite the rise in new and interactive forms of learning. Some 29% say they lean on documentation, edging out videos and side projects (28% each) and slightly ahead of structured online training (26%).
AI tools play a relatively minor role in how respondents learn, with GitHub Copilot cited by just 13% overall — and only 9% among IT pros. It’s also cited by 13% as a preferred learning method.
2. Containers: the great divide?
Among IT pros, container usage soared to 92% — up from 80% in our 2024 survey. Zoom out to a broader view across industries, however, and adoption appears considerably lower. Just 30% of developers say they use containers in any part of their workflow.
Why the gap? Differences in app structure may offer an explanation: IT industry respondents work with microservice-based architectures more often than those in other industries (68% versus 31%). So the higher container adoption may stem from IT pros’ need for modularity and scalability — which containers provide in spades.
And among container users, needs are evolving. They want better tools for time estimation (31%), task planning (18%), and monitoring/logging (15%) — stubborn pain points across the software lifecycle.
3. An equal-opportunity headache: estimating time
No matter the role, estimating how long a task will take is the most consistent pain point across the board. Whether you’re a front-end developer (28%), data scientist (31%), or a software decision-maker (49%), precision in time planning remains elusive.
Other top roadblocks? Task planning (26%) and pull-request review (25%) are slowing teams down. Interestingly, where people say they need better tools doesn’t always match where they’re getting stuck. Case in point, testing solutions and Continuous Delivery (CD) come up often when devs talk about tooling gaps — even though they’re not always flagged as blockers.
4. Productivity by persona: different hats, same struggles
When you break it down by role, some unique themes emerge:
- Experienced developers struggle most with time estimation (42%).
- Engineering managers face a three-way tie: planning, time estimation, and designing from scratch (28% each).
- Data scientists are especially challenged by CD (21%) — a task not traditionally in their wheelhouse.
- Front-end devs, surprisingly, list writing code (28%) as a challenge, closely followed by CI (26%).
Across personas, a common thread stands out: even seasoned professionals are grappling with foundational coordination tasks — not the “hard” tech itself, but the orchestration around it.
5. Tools vs. culture: two sides of the experience equation
On the tooling side, the biggest callouts for improvement include:
- Time estimation (22%)
- Task planning (18%)
- Designing solutions from scratch (17%)
But productivity isn’t just about tools — it’s deeply cultural. When asked what’s working well, developers pointed to work-life balance (39%), location flexibility such as work from home policies (38%), and flexible hours (37%) as top cultural strengths.
The weak spots? Career development (38%), recognition (36%), and meaningful work (33%). In other words: developers like where, when, and how they work, but not always why.
6. What’s easy? What’s not?
While the dev world is full of moving parts, a few areas are surprisingly not challenging:
- Editing config files (8%)
- Debugging in dev (8%)
- Writing config files (7%)
Contrast that with the most taxing areas:
- Troubleshooting in production (9%)
- Debugging in production (9%)
- Security-related tasks (8%)
It’s a reminder that production is still where the stress — and the stakes — are highest.
Bottom line:
Developer productivity isn’t about just one thing. It’s the compound effect of better tools, smarter learning, sharper planning — and yes, a healthy team culture. For orgs to excel, they need to invest not just in platforms, but also in people. Because when you improve the experience, you unlock the performance.