Prior to launching its newest IDE, CLion, JetBrains conducted research into the target market for this product. Now it has shared what it discovered about C++ and C developers, including where they are, what they do and what tools they use, in an infographic.

The information it contains comes from a combination of sources, some of which, like Stackoverflow and the TIOBE index are one we regularly cover. It also used data from Google Trends, GiTHub, Reddit, job ads from Indeed.com and its own user survey.

The key question that JetBrains needed answering before expanding its range of IDEs was what is the size of its potential audience. The research comes up with a total of around 6.3 million made up of 4.4 million C++ devs and 1.9 million C devs. The total is put into perspective by the finding that Java has around 9 million devs - a finding that vindicates JetBrains choice of language for its original and flagship product, IntelliJ IDEA. 

According to map #3 C++ developers are concentrated in EMEA and Asia Pacific. However, given that JetBrains is itself located in the Czech Republic and has an R&D office in Russia, it is significant that the language is particularly predominant in these two countries and their neighbours, Finland and Hungary. Singapore is also a stronghold as are Israel, Germany and France.

Finance is the are in which C++ is most prevalent - and if you add in banking and investment banking you get an even stronger trend. Games  also comes high up the list.

There are no surprises when it comes to which other languages are used with C++ - they are Java, C, C#, Python, SQL and JavaScript.

What may come as a surprise in chart #7 is the fact that 17% of C++ devs are using it on the OS X platform, which seems higher than expected. When it comes to versions the way the chart #8 mixes up C with C++ makes it more difficult to interpret - but it does indicate that less than half are using the latest available version.

The tools already used by C/C++ developers was  a particular focus of this market research exercise. Presenting the infographic on the JetBrains bog, Anastasia Kazakova writes:

From a practical point of view, this research was instrumental in setting our first roadmap. It confirmed our decision to start with the CMake+GCC/Clang+GDB toolchain, and to add LLDB as soon as possible after the 1.0 release.

If you haven't already come across CLion, this video gives a quick tour: 

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