What is the total number of software developers in the world?
And to respond to the inevitable "How do you define a software developer?" -- I'll answer two ways:
References to studies or more authoritative sources of information would be greatly appreciated.
In the latest Stack Overflow podcast, Joel said he's heard there are about 4,000,000, half in the United States and half elsewhere. He also said he thinks that's a generous definition of "programmer," including people who primarily do configuration rather than application development.
I'd say somewhere between 2-5 million. Not sure about the number of Indians working in the field, so maybe more.
A brief estimate (along the lines of a "How many piano tuners are there in Boston" type question). There are approximately 4000 million people in the world. I estimate that 30% of them have access to a computer - this is 1200 million. Of those, I estimate that 1% are software developers according to the definition given above - this is 12 million.
Therefore there are on the order of 12 million software developers in the world. This is consistent with the estimate given by Joel.
As a point of reference, in the latest edition of the book Learning Python which was updated in 2007 and re-published in 2008, the author quotes that they have estimated from web groups and downloads, etc. that approximately 1 million programmers are actively using Python worldwide. It would seem to me that a relatively small percentage of programmers overall are actively working in Python (maybe 10 percent). The range of 5% to 20% is supported by the Language Popularity Page depending on how you want to slice the numbers and assume use of multiple languages by an individual programmer.
This would seem imply that the other estimates in the range of 5 to 10 million seem very reasonable.
Just count the number of SO users and ask your colleagues how many of them use SO.
I kind of felt the numbers in 1800Info's were out, so here's my napkin calculation, I apologise that a lot of this isn't very PC, it's not meant to offend it's just a crude, pragmatic estimate.
Most official estimates indicate the global population (P) is approx 6700M (it's been >4000M since the early 70's). The amount of programmers in what is rather disparagingly referred to as the third world, but basically meaning sub-saharan africa (P*0.14) and agricultural asia can be assumed to be negligible. Generously assuming the entirety of asia (P*0.6) has the same rural/urban distribution as china (58/42), that leaves:
P -= (P*0.14) + (P*0.6*0.42) = 3430M
(the first term is the non-asia, non-africa population)
Of that roughly speaking developed population, 25% are aged under 20 and 10% are retired. Of that adult working age population, a rough estimate of 10% are unemployed or otherwise unable to work.
P *= .65 * .9 = 2006M
Now the estimates get really rough. How many of those adults are non-working and not register unemployed? How many have access to a computer? What qualifies someone as a programmer anyway? Using 1800info's questionable numbrs (30%, 1%) this still leaves no more than 6M.
OTOH, the US government says that 3.1M of a working population of 134M americans describe themselves as programmers (or related). Perhaps you culd just use that as your estimate. :P
All stats just pulled from wikipedia.
The quality of software is often, and in so many aspects, so low that one could be fooled into thinking not enough. But I don't think having more developers would help.
I kinda agree with the estimate of 12 million developers out there. And many of these try to develop something NEW but only few make it worthwhile.
Also, I would guess that if there are 12M software developers, then there are about 11.99M very unique and original blogs on programming ;D :P we all think we're so darn exceptional...
This is taken directly from Jens Schauder's answer in a duplicate question. Best answer I've seen so far.
People seem to agree that this question is somewhere between difficult or impossible to answer http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080814094831AAAZKkg
When I googled your question I found this: From what I found, about 455,000. That is actualy how many jobs in computer programming. and about 25,000 self-employed computer programmers.
http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos110.htm#emply http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/itaa.real.html
Which seems to take only USA, possibly including Canada into account.
And the big warning: Don't compare numbers from different sources, they will most certainly have a very differen basis.
13% of the population in Denmark have written something in a programming language, according to a recent official national survey, and to me that number seems very realistic. Programming has been taught in most primary schools, and since almost all homes have internet and PCs, most kids also try out programming one day or the other. Most high schools and universities also make their students program, so my guess is, that if you ask the population between 20 and 40, the percentage is a LOT higher than 20.
Do Secretaries that write horrible Excel VBA (Visual Basic for creating Abominations) Macros as developers?