Another year is racing towards its end and Netlify remains committed to being a data-driven company. We’re excited to officially announce the release of the 2023 State of Web Development report. This report unpacks insights from the web development community—mapping trends and creating the baseline for some predictions. This report aims to inform the community of trends, expound on the data, and share findings to help developers and organizations inform their web strategies.
Much like last year, we want to be clear that these predictions are maybes, because we all know the world of tech can change rapidly. Let’s begin by scoring our 2023 Predictions—from last year—before diving into our 2024 predictions.
And if you can’t wait to read the full report, here you go: The State of Web Development.
Scoring our predictions for 2023
In our 2022 report, we made some predictions for 2023. Let’s take a look at how they panned out.
Work life: What happened to WFH?
Rating: C Our survey in 2022 inquired about the perceived importance of remote work. Folks raved about remote work, many sharing that they would leave their current jobs to attain a remote position. 2023 brought many surprises, one was the Return To Office (RTO) mandates from hundreds of organizations globally.
Many survey respondents indicated they would quit before following a RTO mandate, but CNBC (2023) shared that “90% of companies say they’ll return to office by the end of 2024.”
CMS: Did Sanity grow as expected?
Rating: A Regarding content management systems (CMS), Sanity debuted last year with the highest satisfaction score of any CMS we asked about. The love for Sanity continues to grow, climbing in familiarity and satisfaction. We believe Sanity will continue to grow and will have another big year in 2024.
Check out which content management systems prevailed in this year’s State of Web Development report.
Component models: Did React grow as predicted?
Rating: A In 2022, React hit an unprecedented 71% market share. And while we admitted that it could eventually be superseded by something newer, cooler, and sexier, the data once again shows that react has achieved another year of growth.
Check out how much it grew.
Frameworks: Did Next.js slow down? What framework gained the most momentum?
Rating: B Last year we made two predictions regarding frameworks. First, we predicted that Next.js’s growth would taper off and that 2023 would mark its peak. Second, we expected huge growth for Remix which was acquired by Shopify in 2022. And saw a remarkable 500% growth in last year’s survey data.
We gave this prediction a B rating because only half of our prediction was true. While Remix saw a YoY increase in overall satisfaction, another framework is experiencing unprecedented growth—marking it as one of the highest satisfaction ratings we’ve ever seen.
Uncover which framework received the highest satisfaction scores, here.
Web development predictions for 2024
These predictions can be both tricky and risky. It’s important to remember, they’re just that—predictions. As with last year, some predictions align with what we expected to see while others caught us—and the market—by surprise.
Here’s what to look for in 2024 and beyond!
Prediction 1: Composable architecture is here to stay
In 2015, Netlify bet big on Jamstack. Gitops workflows and automated continuous delivery introduced what’s now become the default for modern, frontend cloud platforms like Netlify Core. The Jamstack was the key to unlocking ‘headless’ architectures, where the presentation layer was abstracted away from backend systems.
Now, composable architecture is the natural next step in this evolution of the modern web. By decoupling your backend systems to achieve unprecedented performance and flexibility, Enterprise Architects are empowered to align business needs with the right-fit technology to build the ultimate customer-focused experiences. See more benefits of composable architecture.
We’re bullish on composable architecture as we truly believe that composing is a step up from jamming. It’s like running in the crawl, walk, run analogy. We discuss in detail how we think composable architectures—and some other emerging technologies—and how they define a new pace of innovation for web teams will be top of mind for digital migrations and transformations taking place in 2024.
Prediction 2: ML/AI can be the biggest influence in beginning digital transformations in 2024
It’s a shocking reminder that OpenAI released ChatGPT in November of 2022. (Yes, it feels like it’s been longer). Within five days, the platform gained over 1 million users. Just three months later, the platform grew past 100 million active users. Now the platform has 100 million weekly users.
GenAI is shaking the industry and we’re confident that introducing AI tools to developers and marketers will define a new pace of business operation. One where an enterprise’s underlying architecture will need to be supported and optimized around this new pace of building for the web.
While we can’t fully predict the impact that ML/AI will have on web development teams in the next year, we’re certain the footprints of these changes will be everywhere. The default user interface (UI) consumers expect today can evolve tomorrow—unlocking new levels of personalization, interactivity, and complexity.
Read more about our predictions in the report.
Prediction 3: Astro will continue its rapid growth
Remember earlier when we mentioned our prediction around framework growth? It wasn’t Remix that stole the hearts of developers this year. Spoiler alert: we’re thrilled to share that our friends at Astro are this year’s leader in highest framework growth and satisfaction according to the results from the 2023 State of Web Development report! Want to learn more about why web teams are choosing Astro as their framework of choice?
Read the full breakdown here.
Prediction 4: Sanity’s high satisfaction will fuel more growth in 2024
For the second year in a row, Sanity has achieved growth in both usage and satisfaction. There’s no shortage of opinions regarding content management systems and developers are particularly outspoken about which systems they love. Sanity is leading the charge in wowing developers and providing key functionality on building structured content in a powerful way that is making an impact for the developers building web experiences and the end users consuming it. We predict another year of growth for Sanity as the company is well-positioned to plug into an enterprise’s content strategy.
Learn more:
- Download the full report for free
- Read the press release
- See the power of composable architectures with a live demo of the Netlify Composable Web Platform
