How many C# Developers in the world

Question

I noticed no body knows the answer. There is an old study about 4.5 million .NET developers in 2004. Today, if I have to guess, there are at least 7-8 million .NET developers in the world. Most of them use C# in some form.

Anybody? Facts? Clues?

Vulpes · Answer

According to this study in 2008 ( http://www.telerikwatch.com/2008/04/survey-says-c-more-popular-than-vb.html ) there were approximately twice as many C# developers as VB.NET developers. I wouldn't be surprised now if there are 3 times as many C# developers as I suspect there's been much more migration from VB to C# rather than the other way around. According to this 2012 article there were at least 9 million Java developers in the world ( http://java.dzone.com/articles/how-many-java-developers-are ). I have heard MS say that Java and .NET are roughly level-pegging in the business development community and if we assume that's a bit on the optimistic side I don't think your figure of 7 to 8 million .NET developers is wide of the mark. So that would suggest there are about 5 to 6 million C# developers in the world today.