Categories
Community

Another Successful Developer Economics Survey came to an end!

developer economics survey Q2 2019

The Developer Economics Survey runs twice every year, reaching out to all types of developers, from curious weekend hobbyists to enterprise & professional devs with years of coding experience, and to students in need to sharpen their skills. Our vision is to help developers become not only better at coding but offer the necessary resources to enhance their developer skills & make smarter business decisions. In our survey participation, we strive for diversity, including developers from around the world and from all development areas.

Another Developer Economics Survey came to an end on the 13th of August.

The Developer Economics Q2 2019 Survey ran from the 19th of June and once again it has been very exciting, fun and nerve racking! During this period, developers from all over the world, with various backgrounds had their voices heard. Here are some survey fast facts:

  • We ran for 9 weeks
  • Covered 9 languages (English, Vietnamese, Korean, Chinese Simplified & Traditional, Portuguese, Spanish, Japanese and Russian) and
  • 9 areas of development (Web, Mobile, Desktop, Cloud, AR/VR, IoT, Games, Machine Learning and Data Science)
  • Communicated internally through 9 different Slack channels on survey updates & alerts
  • Realised that 9 is our lucky number
  • Reached 179 countries
  • We read through more than 5,100 feedback comments (still answering these)
  • We received 3 comments requesting more kittens and 5 comments requesting more beer (both suggestions are now in the backlog).

We use our Developer Economics survey as an opportunity to give back to the developer community.

For each completed response to the Developer Economics Survey, we donate a small amount of money to the Raspberry Pi Foundation which supports young coders in the making. The idea is simple – the more responses we get, the more money we’ll donate. So, in essence, developers who participate are the ones who contribute in giving back to the community. We try to support different organizations in each survey wave. We welcome input from our respondents, so feel free to share any non profit organizations that support the developer community, in the comments below.

The Developer Economics community is also about fun and games, making it worthwhile for devs to invest time to take and promote the survey. In each survey wave we have prize draws and a very engaging referral program. We try to cover all tastes and always include licences and courses so developers can use rewards to improve their skills. All developers who provide their contact details are eligible to enter the draws. How do we select prizes? We research, ask for our own teams’ developers input, and we always take into account the feedback provided by previous survey winners. Here is what we had for you during the Q2 2019 DE survey:

OnePlus 6T
Microsoft Surface Pro
Oculus Rift S
Amazon Gift cards
Coding courses
Programming tools
And many more in our full list

There are extra prizes for those who complete additional questions in their area of expertise. In this way, the more responses you provide the more chances you have to win! Developers who take the survey are notified for these extra prizes and get to choose the prize they would prefer to win.

Our referral program includes developers from all over the world supporting us to reach as many developers from their communities as possible, and in return, they can win awesome cash prizes if they make it to the top of the leaderboard. Everyone who made it to the Top 50 won cash and the amazing referrer who made it to the top won $1,000 USD. But irrespective of whether you won or not, from all of us on the Developer Economics Team, thank you! You have contributed in the best possible way in helping developers understand the world and the world understand developers – which is our goal and what keeps us going.

After the survey closes and the data is crunched, we provide the survey participants with early access to key findings. These come via our State of the Developer Nation (SoN) Report and the Developer Benchmarks Graphs. Here  you can download the previous SoN report – 16th edition-  while waiting for the next one to be published in a few weeks’ time. You can find the Developer Benchmark graphs here to make sure you know your industry & stay competitive.

What more is there for those who participate? Here is what they have shared with us:

“Thanks for the nice survey. This time, not only I answered some interesting questions, but also learned something new on software products and technologies. Well done!”

 “I think this is a good survey, I also noticed some technologies I didn’t know existed. However it was very interesting filling this survey.”

 “Like the last Developer Economics Survey, this one helped me think that I have a lot to learn and also how I can do it, like what I have to do to achieve my goals. So thank you one more time. Looking forward to next DE survey.”

One of the most interesting parts of our surveys is the feedback we get from respondents. Our team always takes time to read the suggestions provided. Some of them were related to the duration of the survey, others highlighted areas we didn’t cover extensively. We take into account all feedback provided and do our best to include all areas and topics while not increasing the survey duration by much, as we realise it is already quite lengthy. If of interest, we have put together a blogpost with the most fun & interesting survey feedback we received. Enjoy it here.

From all of us in the Developer Economics Team, thank you for being a part of this journey! If this was your first time taking one of our surveys, thank you for joining us. In case you haven’t done so already, you can join our community here. Together we are creating the foundations of a world that is friendlier to developers.

Watch out for the prize draw results, the announcement of the winners, and the reports published in the following days featuring the latest trends & insights.

We hope to see you again in a future Developer Economics Survey!

Categories
Community

Bug fixes, fresh knowledge, kittens and beer: What devs want from Developer Economics

devs want

Developer Economics is the largest developer research program, engaging thousands of developers of all shapes and sizes across the globe. We are the analyst of the developer economy, answering “what do devs want?”.

Twice per year, during the Developer Economics Survey, developers from all over the world, from all areas of coding, have their say in crucial matters around the developer community and share their views to shape the future of coding. The mission of Developer Economics is to “Help the world understand developers and developers understand the world”.

The Q2 2019 DE Survey, was launched on the 19th of June and was officially closed on August 13th. During this time, the developer community supported our mission not only by taking the survey but also by providing insightful & valuable feedback.

In total, we received over 5,100 messages as feedback. Our team read through all of the comments, shortlisted improvements that we want to include in our future surveys and we are currently assessing them to prioritize implementation for our next wave. We received a lot of suggestions about new questions we could include, concerns about the length of our survey, and we were informed about a few bugs or translation problems some of our users ran into. We also received a lot of enthusiastic comments thanking us for the survey and we were excited to read that a lot of the participants learned from our survey as well! A few devs asked us for more kittens while others requested for some beer!

Here are a few of these that we found rewarding:

“Nothing was left out!”
“Looks good to me. It was a detailed survey which covered almost every aspect of a programmer’s life 🙂 Best of luck for future endeavours!” – Siddhesh, India
“Thanks for doing all this work. Good luck on collating all the data and building the report. Really looking forward to the results!”
“What your doing right now is pretty good, keep doing it”
“[…]I love the effort put in by developers economics I am totally grateful that I and my fellow developers in Nigeria and the rest of the world were given this opportunity to express ourselves. Whenever the survey is opened I will love to be part of it again and help spread it.” – Okpako Moses, Nigeria

A few insightful:

“Should create more questions for beginners like me. Thank you.”
“Adding a section for Open Source Software will help a lot next time.” – Kenji Rikitake, Japan
“More jokes” – Camilo Cervantes Salazar, Colombia
“Already great, maybe a much dynamic UI”
“Have a dark theme on your survey website for all of the dark theme-loving developers ;)”

And here are some we thought are hilarious:

“Needs pictures of cats.”
“Free beer”
“What the f**k”

This is only a tiny sample of all the feedback we receive every day here during the surveys and we are happy to read every single one of them! We may not be perfect yet, but with your help, we are improving after each survey wave. So, thank you for taking the time to let us know your thoughts and “what devs want”.

What else do devs want?

We like to give back to all the developers who took the time to participate in our survey. We will run our prize draws and announce the winners early in September, so keep an eye out for that! All survey participants will have early access to our State of Developer Nation Report 17th Edition, which will be published shortly after and will contain all key findings from this survey. Didn’t take part but want to receive a copy of the free report? Sign up here to receive access when it’s live.

From all of us at Developer Economics, thank you! Your contribution means a lot to us. We hope to see you again in our next survey.

Categories
Platforms

Game On! AR vs VR

cover image AR VR

Here at /Data we offer certainty to those that are speculating about software developers: who they are, what they are choosing to do with at work and with their hobby time, and how they are doing it.  We consider ourselves the analysts of the developer economy and often say that we help the world to understand developers…and developers to understand their world.  ARVR

google-cardboard

“Google Cardboard 3d, 360 degree video viewer” by mr.racy is licensed under CC BY 2.0

Two of the areas that we are often asked about by big businesses with skin in the game are Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR). Part of my job is to brief top tier organisations on what the developer audience is focussed upon so the companies can make the best decisions. I don’t speculate — I’m not brave enough for that.  Instead, like every analyst at the company, I use our data to find trends and outliers in this emerging sector.

How do we get the data? We ask the people at the coal face, the developers. We do this twice a year through one of the largest and broadest surveys in the developer calendar. We have a set of questions about AR/VR which we update regularly to find out how the latest frameworks and hardware are faring, and which programming languages are most popular. We can tie the data back to the types of apps that developers are creating, whether they work professionally or as hobbyists, and where they are based, among other things. We write reports after analysing the data, which you can find here. The AR/VR reports are in the “Emerging” category.

In the rest of this blog post, I’m going to share a few key facts that we gathered in a recent wave of our survey (Q2 2018). We currently have another survey running and would love to include your opinions; if you share them with us, there’s the chance to win some awesome prizes. Interested? Take the survey. 

ARVR development is immature

OK, that probably came out wrong! AR/VR development is still not a mature area in that it’s hardly established in the same way as desktop or web development. We generally use the more polite term “nascent” to describe an area where most of the developers working in it are hobbyists, though often professionals in other sectors, or students. In nascent areas, we find most developers are simply trying out ideas to find out more about the basics of the technology and work out where to go with it. 

ARVR development is increasing in popularity, with over 20% of our survey respondents saying they had worked on such a project in the past 12 months. Given our estimates of the total worldwide developer population, that gives a global population of AR/VR developers of over 5M.

We see a high number of young, inexperienced developers in this area, which is another sign of a sector that hasn’t yet settled down sufficiently for businesses to build a stable ecosystem of professional developers within it. It’s a sign of churn, where developers try the technology and move on. Most AR/VR apps are developed within the games category and, where they are not, their developers are still uncertain of their audience. Among AR/VR developers, almost 2 out of 3 are not so much bothered about making revenue from their efforts, but are simply interested in gaining experience. 

Virtual reality

Hardware moves rapidly in this sector, and we find ourselves updating our question set for each survey as acquisitions and closures affect the vendor marketplace.

When it comes to VR, developers are clearly keen on sexy dedicated hardware such as Oculus. But our data reveals that the same number of VR developers work with the cheaper, smartphone-based option Google Cardboard. The hardware created by a range of third party device manufacturers, incorporating the Windows 10 Mixed Reality platform (which can also be used for VR) is also highly popular with VR developers. 

ARVR Graph

 

Augmented Reality

AR is a very different beast to VR. It’s well-suited for a smartphone platform, most famously made popular by Pokémon Go. Huge investments by Apple and Google are paying off. They are keen to get you developing on their platforms because of the massive potential within the app stores (again, see Pokémon Go for an example).

ARCore on Android and ARKit on iOS are the platforms of choice for AR development by some margin. The most popular wearable for AR is Microsoft HoloLens, as Magic Leap had yet to be launched at the time of the survey. It will be interesting to see how things have changed now that device is out of the closet. So, if you’re working on this newest of hardware, tell us about it in the survey!

AR is the simple, more accessible end of the spectrum for developers. The spectrum crosses from more sophisticated mixed reality up to full-blown virtual reality. Developers are finding that AR is a good place to start, particularly during this period where underlying technology and hardware undergoes rapid evolution and pricing levels for consumers start to wobble. Starting with AR, developers can learn how to blend virtual elements ever more seamlessly into the real world, and take their experience later into the convergence zone as virtual reality becomes a more realistic proposition for users and developers alike. It’s the gateway for many, and we are seeing more growth in AR than VR for this reason.

https://youtu.be/r87hy0bdUh8?t=85

 

What about working cross platform?

Fragmentation is real, and being able to deploy across a range of hardware is always attractive. If you’re a game developer, and even if you are not, Unity and Unreal provide sophisticated cross platform development and tools that include ARVR. They do come with a steep learning curve so we find them mostly popular with those already initiated (e.g. game devs). Other platforms such as Lens Studio, Spark AR and Sumerian are empowering AR developers, and we want to find out how popular they are becoming in the developer community. 

To get this kind of useful information, and more, we need you in the survey this time around!  We want to know what languages you are using, the hardware, the platforms, and the apps you are creating. Has the new Oculus Quest has piqued your interest and restarted the heart of VR development? Or is AR and mixed reality where it’s at? Why not take the chance to tell us? Help us tell the teams behind these products what you are deciding, so they can do their best to support you. 

Have your say. Take the survey. 

Categories
Platforms

Choosing the right Containers-as-a-Service (CaaS) – or not

containers

The emergence of cloud native development and containers has redefined how software is developed. But not all organizations have the resources or expertise to set up the required infrastructure to support a containerized application. Luckily, cloud vendors offer Containers-as-a-Service to help developers to capitalize on the benefits of cloud native development. 

All three leading cloud providers have CaaS products but choosing the right one can be a challenge. While everyone has different requirements, it is always beneficial to understand what solutions others are using and why, to help inform decisions. 

Based on research from /Data’s recent Developer Economics survey, we have discovered that there are a few factors that drive developers to choose one CaaS over another: 

  • familiarity with tools and languages
  • integration with other systems
  • support and documentation 
  • ease and speed of development. 

While there were other reasons for developers to consider when adopting a platform, the percentage of developers that considered these four factors important is noticeably different across the three leaders. Some of the other sixteen factors that are tracked in the research  include:

  • pricing
  • community
  • learning curve
  • suitability and feature set
  • performance 
  • scalability

graph-Reasons-for

Not all CaaS platforms are selected for the same reasons though. Developers that chose AWS Elastic Container Service were more likely to choose it because of its integration with other systems. This is a reason to choose AWS ECS for 34% of developers using it, compared to 29% and 28% for Azure and Google. Amazon not only has a vast array of tools and services, they also have a robust partner network. The options are so great they have their own service marketplace and have even released a Cloud Map service to help developers discover and manage it all. 

Developers tend to favor Google Container Engine (GCE) because it is easy to use and well documented. Forty five percent of GCE developers chose it in part because of the support and documentation and 36% because of ease and speed of development. We tend to find that developers are consistently happy with the support and documentation that Google provides to their developer community. This satisfaction is an important reason for Google Container Engine users to choose the platform. 

For Azure Container Service, developers like the fact that they can use the tools and languages that they are familiar with. Azure developers are 7 and 12 percentage points more likely to choose Azure Container Service for this reason than Amazon and Google respectively. Our research shows that Microsoft developers are relatively brand loyal so Azure has made it easy for developers to use Microsoft tools for container development and management. Azure has enabled developers to develop using Docker containers and Visual Studio, tools to deploy code to Azure Container Service with a simple command. They have also made it possible to deploy Docker containers to Windows Servers. Finally integration with Active Directory enables loyal Microsoft developers to use existing authentication policies and technologies .

At the end of the day, most developers are looking for a platform that is easy to use and fits with their current strategy and infrastructure, whether it is though integrations, support, or the ability to use the tools that they are comfortable with. 

Containers: Is it really a choice of either or?

While each solution has unique benefits, our analysis also found that many developers were using more than one leading CaaS and in some cases three. Seven percent of developers using a CaaS were using all three of the leading platforms while 46% were using two.

graph-developers-use

Our data verifies what you may already suspect based on your own experiences: more than half of backend developers are pursuing a multi cloud strategy, choosing not to commit to a single provider. 

There are a number of benefits to a multi-cloud solution that are driving this trend. IT organizations can avoid vendor lockin if teams develop for a multi cloud environment. This approach forces developers to build without relying on vendor specific services, reducing switching costs. Multi-cloud approaches also enables organizations to optimize their infrastructure. Developers and operations pro’s can leverage the strengths of each cloud depending on the requirements of various workloads and applications. Greater resilience is also a key benefit to consider. This is especially important in denial of service attacks where compute resources can be overwhelmed with fake requests. With a backup cloud ready and waiting, workloads can just shift to the backup cloud.

The choice of either one CaaS or the other will become even less relevant in the future as leading vendors are all standardizing on Kubernetes. Amazon and Azure are promoting Kubenetes-specific CaaS offerings to focus more on Kubernetes as the underlying orchestration engine. Azure is actually migrating all its users to the Kubernetes service. With Kubernetes the standard orchestration engine, migrating apps and container across cloud providers becomes much easier.

We are also seeing Amazon and Azure working to make it more convenient to develop using containers and Kubernetes. Both firms are offering clusterless or serverless Kubernetes services such as Fargate from AWS and Azure Container Instance. These solutions enable developers to just deploy containers without having to worry about servers or clusters. This approach will make it easier for developers but the additional level of abstraction also reduces flexibility and increases switching costs. 

Amazon’s open sourcing of Firecracker, the micro VM that supports the serverless platform Lambda and Fargate, will be another interesting development to watch. This may prove to be Amazon’s response to Kubernetes but for the serverless market. While still a ways off this could lead to a serverless ecosystem that is just as flexible as the container landscape.

What do you think?

Do you feel strongly about the container solution you are using? 

Or perhaps you feel poorly about certain other containers. 

Let us know about it and have your voice heard by taking the Developer Economics survey.

Categories
Languages

JavaScript remains the Queen of Programming Languages

programming languages

Welcome to another update on programming languages communities. The choice of programming language matters deeply to developers because they want to keep their skills up to date and marketable. Languages are a beloved subject of debate and the kernels of some of the strongest developer communities. They matter to toolmakers too, as they want to make sure they provide the most useful SDΚs.

languages_graph

 

It can be hard to assess how widely used a programming language is. The indices available from players like Tiobe, Redmonk, Stack Overflow’s yearly survey, or Github’s Octoverse are great, but mostly offer only relative comparisons between languages, providing no sense of the absolute size of each community. They may also be biased geographically, or skewed towards certain fields of software development, or open source developers.

The estimates we present here look at active software developers using each programming language, across the globe and across all kinds of programmers. They are based on two pieces of data. First, our independent estimate of the global number of software developers, which we published for the first time in 2017. Second, our large-scale, low-bias surveys which reach more than 20,000 developers every six months. In the survey, we consistently ask developers about their use of programming languages across nine areas of development1, giving us rich and reliable information about who uses each language and in which context.

JavaScript is and remains the queen of programming languages. Its community of 11.7M developers is the largest of all languages. In 2018, 2.5M developers joined the community: the highest growth in absolute numbers and more than the entire population of Swift, Ruby, or Kotlin developers, amongst others. New developers see it as an attractive entry-level language, but also existing developers are adding it to their skillset. Even in software sectors where Javascript is least popular like machine learning or on-device code in IoT, over a quarter of developers use it for their projects.

Python has reached 8.2M active developers and has now surpassed Java in terms of popularity. It is the second-fastest growing language community in absolute terms with 2.2M net new Python developers in 2018. The rise of machine learning is a clear factor in its popularity. A whopping 69% of machine learning developers and data scientists now use Python (compared to 24% of them using R).

Java (7.6M active developers), C# (6.7M), and C/C++ (6.3M) are fairly close together in terms of community size and are certainly well-established languages. However, all three are now growing at a slower rate than the general developer population. While they are not exactly stagnating, they are no longer the first languages that (new) developers look to.

Java is very popular in the mobile ecosystem and its offshoots (Android), but not for IoT devices. C# is a core part of the Microsoft ecosystem. Throughout our research, we see a consistent correlation between the use of C# and the use of Microsoft developer products. It’s no surprise to see desktop and AR/VR (Hololens) as areas where C# is popular. C/C++ is a core language family for game engines and in IoT, where performance and low-level access matter (AR/VR exists on the boundary between games and IoT).

PHP is now the second most popular language for web development and the fifth most popular language overall, with 5.9M developers. Like Python, it’s growing significantly faster than the overall developer population, having added 32% more developers to its ranks in 2018. Despite having (arguably) a somewhat bad reputation, the fact that PHP is easy to learn and widely deployed still propels it forward as a major language for the modern Internet.

The fastest growing language community in percentage terms is Kotlin. It grew by 58% in 2018 from 1.1M to 1.7M developers. Since Google has made Kotlin a first-class language for Android development, we can expect this growth to continue, in a similar way to how Swift overtook Objective-C for iOS development.

Other niche languages don’t seem to be adding many developers, if any. Swift and Objective-C are important languages to the Apple community, but are stable in terms of the number of developers that use them. Ruby and Lua are not growing their communities quickly either.

Older and more popular programming languages have vocal critics, while new, exciting languages often have enthusiastic supporters. This data would suggest that it’s not easy for new languages to grow beyond their niche and become the next big thing. What does this mean for the future of these languages and others like Go or Scala? We will certainly keep tracking this evolution and plan to keep you informed.

The Developer Economics survey is now Live.
Have your say in which should be the next programming language Queen and you may win amazing prizes and gear. Discover more.

Want more developer insights on programming languages?

The State of Developer Nation report is free to download.

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Categories
Events

Developer Conferences 2019: The Roundup

developer conferences

Conferences are the best place to share your passions and get a great booster in trends, knowledge & even hacks. Here is a roundup of developer conferences taking place in 2019 globally.

Keep an eye on these if:

  • you want to upscale your current knowledge and network,
  • meet fellow developers,
  • you are ready to push yourself to build new paths in your career
  • you just want to learn new things & find fresh content on new technologies, latest practices, and innovative techniques.

 

Best Dev Free Conferences: 

AllDayDevOps

AllDayDevOps is a DevOps conference with over 30,000 participants that houses over 120+ sessions spread out between five tracks, and 24 hours, including CI/CD, cloud-native infrastructure, DevSecOps, cultural transformations, and site reliability engineering

  • November 6, 2019
  • Online
  • Free

 

DevConf.IN 2019

DevConf.IN 2019 is the annual Developers’ Conference organized by Red Hat in India. It is meant to provide a platform to the local FOSS community participants to come together and engage in knowledge sharing through technical talks, workshops, panel discussions, and hackathons.

  • August 2-3, 2019
  • Bengaluru, India
  • Free

 

Best Dev Conferences: Series of Worldwide Conferences 

DevOpsDays

DevOpsDays focuses on general DevOps topics and includes curated talks. It also features a spin on the concept of open space, with discussions on software development and IT infrastructure.

  • 29 May – 28 November, 2019
  • Worldwide, including: Europe, North America, Latin America, Asia, and Africa
  • Depending on location (~$150)

 

DevOps World | Jenkins World

DevOps World | Jenkins World is a Jenkins-supported DevOps conference. It focuses on the automation software Jenkins and it welcomes more than 2,500 attendees, making it the largest Jenkins-focused DevOps conference.

  • August 12-15, 2019 & December 2-5, 2019
  • San Fransisco, USA & Lisbon, Portugal
  • $499 – $1.199

 

Monitorama

Monitorama focuses strictly on software and infrastructure monitoring.

  • June 3-5, 2019 & October 21-22, 2019
  • Portland & Baltimore
  • $400

 

DevOps Enterprise Summit Europe & USA

DevOps Enterprise Summit is aimed at leaders of large, complex organizations that are implementing DevOps principles and practices.

  • June 25-27, 2019 in Europe & October 28-30, 2019 in USA
  • London, UK & Las Vegas, Nevada, USA
  • £600-£800 + VAT in Europe & $1,400 to $1,975 in USA

 

KubeCon/CloudNativeCon USA & China

KubeCon (and CloudNativeCon) is a Linux Foundation event focused on the Kubernetes technology.

  • November 18 – 21, 2019 in USA & June 24-26, 2019 in China
  • San Diego, California & Shanghai, China
  • $150 – $1.200 in USA & ￥375 – ￥6000

 

Best Dev Conferences in Europe: 

DevOpsCon

This conference includes an expo floor and addresses topics such as continuous delivery, microservices, docker, cloud computing, and shorter delivery cycles.

  • June 11-14, 2019
  • Berlin, Germany
  • €413-€1,979

 

Devopsdays Amsterdam

devopsdays Amsterdam brings development, operations, QA, InfoSec, management, and leadership together to discuss the culture and tools to make better organizations and products.

  • June 26-28, 2019
  • Amsterdam, Netherlands
  • €99.00 – €249.00

 

CloudNative London

CloudNative covers everything cloud-native, from containers and schedulers to Kubernetes & DevOps.

  • September 25-27
  • London, UK
  • $1,195

 

JAX London

JAX London is a four-day conference for cutting edge software engineers and enterprise-level professionals. Brings together the world’s leading innovators in the fields of JAVA, microservices, continuous delivery, and DevOps.

  • October 7-10, 2019
  • London, UK
  • £399.00  – £649.00

 

JokerConf

Joker is a large international Java conference for Senior Java developers, with more than 1400 participants.

  • October 25-26, 2019
  • Saint Petersburg, Russia
  • $TBA

 

Devoxx Belgium

Devoxx Belgium is a 5-day conference where developers and architects join to examine the latest technology advancements and fascinating ideas, with some of the most inspiring speakers of the sector.

  • November 4 – 8, 2019
  • Antwerp, Belgium
  • €350 – €845

 

dotJS 2019

The world’s largest & sharpest JavaScript conference.

  • December 5-6, 2019
  • Paris, France
  • €299/€199 (2-day/1-day passes)

 

Devternity

The conference that turns developers into architects and engineering leaders.

  • December 6-7, 2019
  • Riga, Latvia
  • €299 – €598

 

Best Conferences in North America: 

Agile + DevOps West

Agile + DevOps West offers a full menu of conference services, including talks from recognized subject-matter experts and training and certification classes the day before the official conference begins.

  • June 2-7, 2019
  • Las Vegas, Nevada, USA
  • $1,595 to $3,995

 

Apple WWDC19

Apple gives you the chance to join thousands of coders, creators,  this summer to create insanely great coding.

  • June 3-7, 2019
  • San Jose, California
  • $1,599 (2019 registration is closed)

 

Velocity Conference

Velocity focuses on real-world best practices for building, deploying, and running complex, distributed applications and systems.

  • June 10-13,2019
  • San Jose, California, USA
  • $1.135 – $1.595

 

Open Source Summit

Open Source Summit is a technical conference where 2,000+ developers, operators, and community leadership professionals collaborate, share information and learn about the latest trends in open technologies, including Linux, containers, cloud computing and more.

  • August 21-23, 2019
  • San Diego, California
  • $950 ($275 hobbyist/academic tickets also available)

 

ApacheCon

In ApacheCon you can learn about the latest innovations in containers, cloud, DevOps, IoT, servers, web frameworks, plus many other Apache projects and communities in a collaborative, vendor-neutral environment.

  • September 9-12, 2019
  • Las Vegas
  • $500 (prices increase after June 27th)

 

Microsoft Ignite

Microsoft created Ignite to consolidate several smaller conferences: Microsoft Management Summit, Microsoft Exchange Conference, SharePoint Conference, Lync Conference, Project Conference, and TechEd.

  • November 2-8
  • Orlando, Florida, USA
  • $ TBA

 

Cybersecurity & Cloud Expo 2019

Arriving in the heart of Silicon Valley, the Cyber Security & Cloud event is co-located with the IoT Tech Expo, AI & Big Data Expo and Blockchain Expo so you can explore the convergence of these technologies in one place.

  • November 13-14, 2019
  • Santa Clara, California
  • $129 – $949 (prices increase after June 29th)

 

AWS re:Invent 2019

Join the AWS re:invent 2019 for deep technical sessions, hands-on bootcamps, hackathons, workshops, chalk talks, keynotes, and fun.

  • December 2-6, 2019
  • Las Vegas
  • $1,799 (2018)

 

Best Dev Conferences in APAC: 

 

SREcon Asia Pacific

SREcon 2019 is a gathering of engineers who care deeply about site reliability, systems engineering and working with complex distributed systems at scale.

  • June 12–14, 2019
  • Singapore
  • $750 – $900

 

Rootconf 2019

Rootconf 2019 is established in the middle of an era of data leaks and vulnerabilities, managing and running large infrastructure systems, architecting for the cloud and simultaneously optimizing costs.

  • 21-22 JUNE 2019
  • Bangalore, India
  • ₹3100 – ₹5800

 

PHPConf.Asia 2019

Can’t stop discussing and arguing about your favorite PHP framework? Join the challenge of defending the various PHP frameworks.

  • June 23-26, 2019
  • Singapore
  • $ TBA

 

RISE:

From the team behind Web Summit comes RISE, a gathering of the world’s biggest companies and most exciting startups. With more than 15,000 attendees and 350+ speakers expected, this is a truly massive event.

  • July 8-11, 2019
  • Hong Kong
  • $680

 

Open Source Summit Japan

Open Source Summit Japan is the leading conference in Japan. I is connecting the open source ecosystem under one roof, providing a forum for technologists and open source industry leaders.

  • July 17-19, 2019
  • Tokyo, Japan
  • $150 – $450

 

DevOps Talks Conference

DevOps Talks Conference (DOTC) brings together DevOps leaders, engineers, and architects who are implementing DevOps principles and practices in Start-Ups and in Leading Enterprise companies.

  • September 10-11, 2019
  • Sydney, Australia
  • $799,33

 

CIO Leaders Summit Indonesia

CIO Summit in Indonesia is the largest and most respected gathering of CIO’s and IT leaders in Jakarta.

  • October 24, 2019
  • Jakarta, Indonesia
  • $ TBA

 

Xilinx Developer Forum

XDF connects software developers and system designers to the deep expertise of Xilinx engineers, partners, and industry leaders. Earn insights and inspiration an get ready to tackle your next breakthrough in an application or system design.

  • December 3 – 4, 2019
  • Beijing, China
  • $ TBA

 

Best Dev Conferences in South America:

 

The Developer’s Conference

The Developer’s Conference (TDC) is the largest event related to software development in Brazil. It is connecting meetup and event organizers, speakers, companies, and sponsors on a single platform, in order to empower the local ecosystem.

  • July 16-20, 2019
  • Sao Paolo, Brazil
  • $TBA

 

Ekoparty Security Conference

Ekoparty Security Conference is the annual IT security event that, due to its unique characteristics and its particular style, has become a benchmark for all of Latin America. The attendees have the chance to learn more about the latest technological innovations, vulnerabilities, and tools.

  • September 25-27, 2019
  • Buenos Aires, Argentina
  • $TBA

 

WorkTech Buenos Aires

WorkTech Buenos Aires is the leading international conference dedicated to the future of work by bringing together international experts, who provide an inspiring and innovative look.

  • October 17, 2019
  • Buenos Aires, Argentina
  • $TBA

 

InfoComm Colombia

InfoComm is the main fair for the Audio, Video, Lighting, Domotics, Networks, Voice and Data industry in the region of Colombia.

  • October 23-25, 2019
  • Bogota, Colombia
  • $TBA

 

The 7th International Conference on Software Engineering Research and Innovation

The purpose of the conference is to bring together practitioners and researchers from academe, industry, and government. The aim is to advance the state of the art in Software Engineering, as well as generating synergy between academy and industry.

  • October 23 – 25, 2019
  • Mexico City, Mexico
  • $TBA

Best Dev Conferences in Middle East & Africa:

 

AI expo Africa

AI Expo Africa is the largest business-focused Artificial Intelligence (AI) & Data Science Community event in Africa.

  • September 4-5th, 2019
  • Cape Town, South Africa
  • R4,500 – R6,500

 

International Conference on Science, Engineering & Technology – ICSET 2019

ICSET 2018 will provide an excellent international forum for sharing knowledge and a result in Science, Engineering & Technology. The goal of the Conference is to provide a platform to share cutting-edge development in the field for both researchers and practitioners.

  • September 25-26, 2019
  • Johannesburg, South Africa
  • $TBA

 

South Africa 2019

The ideal conference for database administration and developer community who use PostgreSQL to get to know each other, exchange ideas and learn about the current features and upcoming trends within PostgreSQL.

  • October 08 – 09, 2019
  • Johannesburg, South Africa
  • $TBA

 

3th edition of International Conference Europe Middle East & North Africa On Information System Technology and Learning Researches

EMENA-ISTL 2019 is the conference that focuses on areas of Information System & Technology, e-Learning and artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning and how it applies to the real world.

  • November 21-23, 2019
  • Marrakech, Morocco
  • $TBA

 

Africa Arena

AfricArena accelerates the growth of tech startups and the ecosystems in which they operate by providing a platform where they can share their business model, gain valuable networks and attain funding.

  • December 11-12, 2019
  • Cape Town, South Africa
  • R1,499 – R7,975

 

Did you find this list useful or did we forget any important conferences? Anyhow, let us know your opinion in the comment section!

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Categories
Tools

An Agile Software World

agile software

Since the emergence of the first agile software development methods more than 20 years ago, development teams around the world have undergone a significant cultural shift. The traditional waterfall approach to running software projects sequentially has been gradually replaced by iterative project management styles. This has enabled organisations of all sizes to scale successfully by remaining resilient in a business environment full of uncertainties. Agile methodology appears to be transforming companies across sectors, but is it really the dominant trend in the software industry nowadays? And if it is, which particular implementations of agile are the most widely used by developers?

 

To gain more insight into the above questions, we asked 11,700+ developers in our latest Developer Economics survey about the project management methodologies they follow in software development. The data we collected provides clear evidence that agile is indeed the most commonly adopted practice in the software industry.

Agile project management

Agile is an umbrella term used for processes like Scrum and Kanban that emphasise short release cycles, rapid response to changing requirements and continuous improvement through regular customer feedback, as described in the Agile manifesto of 2001. According to our survey data, more than half (58%) of developers say they follow a project management methodology that can be classified as agile.

By comparison, the once ruling waterfall methodology is currently used by only 15% of developers. Waterfall’s biggest advantage, i.e. its sequential approach, is also its greatest limitation: in projects where the goals are not clear from the beginning and requirements change continuously, waterfall fails to adapt and deliver results quickly.

 

SCRUM IS LEADING THE AGILE REVOLUTION

Scrum was conceived in the mid 1990s as a response to the shortcomings of waterfall and is now the most popular project management methodology, followed by 37% of developers. As a framework that puts the core principles of agile into practice, Scrum enables teams to break down large, complex projects into a series of smaller iterations (or sprints) and ship high quality products faster and more frequently.

Kanban is another prominent agile project management framework, although its popularity is significantly lower – nearly half of Scrum’s (20% vs 37%). The two methodologies share some of the same core values but have very different implementations. Most notably, Kanban is lighter on structure as it’s not constrained by fixed-length iterations, but instead it prioritises continuous delivery of work to customers (even multiple times per day) as long as the capacity of the team permits it.

Only 6% of developers blend the concepts of Scrum and Kanban into Scrumban, indicating that agile hybrids are not common. Agile-waterfall hybrids, in contrast, are the second most popular choice for developers (21%). This is most likely a sign that many organisations remain skeptical towards agile development and prefer a slower transition to it by mixing some of the less controversial agile techniques with the traditional waterfall method.

Other well-established frameworks such as Feature-driven development (FDS), Extreme programming (XP) and Lean are used by about 10% of developers, whereas Adaptive software development (ASD) and Dynamic systems development method (DSDM) – both outgrowths of the early Rapid application development method – appeal to more niche audiences. Interestingly 23% of developers don’t use any specific methodology in their projects, although – as one may expect – it’s mostly amateurs who do so (40%) and to a much lesser extent professionals (17%). Another 19% of developers (18% of professionals) do not follow any specific project management process for some of their side projects, which in most cases are hobby endeavours.

Our data reveals that developers tend to follow multiple methodologies across their projects (2.7 on average), with Scrum being the most frequently co-used framework along with other methodologies. This implies that Scrum often acts as a “touch point” for development teams landing on the world of agile or as a starting choice before transitioning to less structured agile processes. For example, 66% of developers using Kanban and 57% using XP also use Scrum, as opposed to only 36% and 13% of Scrum followers also using Kanban and XP, respectively. Among developers following the waterfall model, more than 40% also use either Scrum or an agile-waterfall hybrid (like Scrummerfall) while the adoption of any other framework is below 25%. It seems that Scrum’s simplicity, clearly defined roles and timeboxed nature attract development teams who want a smoother transition from traditional waterfall to more flexible approaches.

Agile_Software_World

You can read the latest full State of the Developer Nation report here, and help shape the trends by taking the 18th Developer Economics survey here

 

Categories
Platforms

True Cloud-native Development Has Yet To Go Mainstream

cloud native development

Cloud-native development and containerisation is redefining how software applications are built and run. The movement has captured an increasing amount of press and adoption is brisk as teams innovate modern architectures to build upon the unique capabilities of the cloud. Designing applications from the ground up to run in the cloud is also delivering more robust and flexible applications. But, while containerising apps has become very popular, many developers are simply migrating old code and processes to containers and are not yet developing true native apps.

 

WHAT IS CLOUD-NATIVE AND WHY IS IT IMPORTANT?

The cloud-native computing foundation (CNCF) defines it as ”using an open source software stack to deploy applications as microservices, packaging each part into its own container, and dynamically orchestrating those containers to optimize resource utilization.”

The first step towards cloud native computing is implementing containers so resources can be shared with other apps. Containers can also be spun up much faster than VM’s and are portable so they will run the same in any environment. In addition, they offer another layer of isolation from the host environment so applications can be built more securely. These benefits have broad appeal and half of backend developers are using either containers or a service that leverages containers under the hood, such as serverless platforms or cloud functions.

While the benefits of containers are significant it is the combination of containers, microservices and orchestration that enables greater efficiency in the use of cloud computing resources. For example, microservices with heavy workloads can scale out without having to scale the entire application. Also, services that are not required for current workloads can be shut down, thus optimising pay-as-you-go business models and reducing costs. Finally, the scalability and portability of containers combined with orchestration leads to distributed systems that offer greater resiliency. If there is a problem on one server, another instance of the microservers can be spun-up to take its place.

 

SoN_16_Cloud1

 

Our survey found that just 43% of developers are using containers plus container orchestration tools and management platforms, leaving 57% managing their own container deployments. Developers who are not leveraging orchestration tools may just be moving existing applications into containers or building simple apps with a few containers that can be managed manually. Cloud native apps have to not only leverage containers but should be designed specifically to capitalise on the efficiencies that the cloud offers. Developers that are using containers but not using orchestration tools, or platforms with built in orchestration, are not really building cloud native apps.

Cloud-native is more than just migrating to the cloud or containerising a monolithic app. Lifting and shifting an existing application and plopping it in a container is not a modern approach. Historically, as new computing platforms emerge, there is a temptation to take the code that already exists and just port it to the new platform. While you may realise some benefits, the true value of the new platform is missed. This is a common mistake developers make as platforms become popular. The growth phase of mobile apps is a case in point. Once everyone wanted apps on their smartphones, developers ported desktop apps to mobile which were not designed to capitalise on the unique benefits or mobility leading to poor experiences.

 

DEVELOPERS HAVE MULTIPLE OPTIONS TO BE TRULY CLOUD NATIVE

New services are emerging that offer various levels of abstraction that makes it easier for developers to take advantage of cloud-native architecture. Containers-as-a-Service (CaaS), serverless solutions and cloud functions are making cloud-native development more accessible. Developers can deploy containers and orchestration engines on their own or leverage frameworks provided by CaaS offerings. They can also use serverless platforms so that they don’t have to touch a server at all but still get the benefit of orchestrated containers and dynamic services. These solutions are becoming quite popular: 47% of backend developers are using these functions or serverless architecture.

With the flexibility of native cloud development and microservices, developers are free to use the most appropriate tools and services to build discrete components of their apps or services. The spectrum of abstraction and strengths of each approach enable developers to optimise their applications and development time by using the best technology for the job. For example, cloud native developers can use serverless for running short, event-driven processes and containers for running longer more robust code. Additional services are coming to market to fill niches in the spectrum of cloud-native offerings presenting even more options for developers. For example, AWS Fargate is filling the gap between CaaS and serverless where developers still have access to the server but don’t have to worry about containers. The results from our survey confirm that many developers are using multiple solutions to optimise resources. In fact, 32% of developers using containers are also using serverless and 40% of true cloud native developers leveraging orchestration tools and platforms are also running serverless.

 

Want more insights plus an extra graph?

Feel free to download our State of the Developer Nation 16th Edition report.

It’s free and full of insights.

Categories
Community

Calling All Developers to Shape the Future of Software Development

shape the future of software development

The latest Developer Economics survey is now live, ready to measure the pulse of the developer ecosystem, helping the world understand developers and vice versa. We are calling all developers to shape the future of software development.

Here are a few facts about our developer surveys:

    • This is the 17th edition of the semi-annual Developer Economics surveys.
    • It is supported by the leading developer communities and technology vendors around the world: Amazon Alexa, Azure, ARM, Connected London, Intuit, Here, Digital Ocean, Nutanix, DZone, Hacker Nest, Heroku, Intel, Microsoft, Mozilla, Pivotal, VMWare, Salesforce, Samsung, SAP, Sitepoint, and more. However, it is run by the independent analyst firm /Data. (https://www.slashdata.co/)
    • We reach over 40,000+ developers in 167 countries annually.

Who is this for? Who will shape the future of software development?

Software developers of all profiles including professionals, hobbyists, and students who work across all major areas: mobile, web, desktop, cloud, IoT, AR/VR, games, machine learning & data science.

What has changed in the survey?

  • We have redesigned our questionnaire to capture all trends & insights related to the developer ecosystem.
  • Developers can now sign-up for a global, independent, ever-growing community.
  • We have a new Point System. Developers can earn points through several actions and unlock exclusive content and prizes.
  • The survey theme. It’s now easier to walk through the questions with minimum distractions. That said, we try to make the survey taking as fun as possible, so that survey participants can enjoy a few fun facts throughout their experience.
  • We want to hear the true developers’ voice so we reward them with amazing prizes, gadgets, licenses, etc.
  • For each completed response to the survey, /Data will donate USD $0.1 to the Raspberry Pi Foundation to support the developers of tomorrow access tools and learning courses.
  • There is a revamped Referral program available for all survey takers. Sharing is caring!

& What has stayed the same?

  • It features questions that cover developers’ level of coding skills, favourite programming languages, technologies used for work/hobby, go-to spaces for learning and resources, as well as preferred tools for specific areas of development: mobile, web, desktop, cloud, IoT, AR/VR, games, machine learning & data science.
  • We still care about learning and giving back, on top of helping devs
  • Available to developers around the world in English, plus 8 other languages: Chinese Simplified, Chinese Traditional, Spanish, Portuguese, Vietnamese, Russian, Japanese, Korean.

For any additional information regarding the Developer Economics Survey, feel free to contact the Developer Economics team at community@developereconomics.com.

Developer Economics survey is now open, inviting all developers to take the survey and voice their opinions about platforms, apps, languages, APIs, revenues, dev tools, and more.

Are you a developer? Have your say!

Join us today!

Categories
Business

Why Is Mainstream Adoption Hard To Achieve

mainstream adoption

When you are involved and excited by an emerging technology, it is a common instinct to overestimate its impact and promise. Media enthusiasm builds in intensity and stokes interest, and when a new technology is promoted at the proof-of-concept stage, the publicity encourages developers to investigate it. Early adopters dive in, development proceeds, and success stories add to the anticipation of great things to come.But what about mainstream adoption?

While the intensity of interest may appear strong, it is equally likely that there are many, unreported, abandoned projects. Developers may initially be enthusiastic about a technology but then sometimes find their expectations are not met for a number of reasons, particularly if the hardware promoted is unavailable, consumers are not interested, or the necessary tools are difficult to get to grips with. To avoid disappointment, those developers wishing to be successful in a new field will need to work hand-in-hand with vendors providing the products or platforms. It is only through refinement that an immature technology can become sufficiently compelling to encourage mainstream uptake and continuing media attention rather than be written off as over-hyped.

We gauged interest in certain technologies by asking developers about the areas they are actively working on, learning about or simply interested in. The resulting answers fall into four quadrants when divided around the median values of the responses, indicative of the technologies that have already matured and been widely adopted, those that are triggering interest, and those that are still nascent or have hit a plateau.

 

Mainstream_Adoption_Graph

 

 

MAINSTREAM ADOPTION

DevOps is one of the best-established, mainstream technologies of those areas we asked about. Used across a range of industry sectors, it is a set of tools and practices that allow development and operations teams to collaborate in the development and rollout of their software. DevOps automates infrastructure, testing, and performance management, allowing code to be released into production more regularly and with fewer defects.

DevOps is one of the areas that ranked highest in the survey in terms of interest, learning, and adoption. It is the most popular by some margin for developer adoption (17%) and learning (also 17%), and over half of the developers that expressed interest in the topic are working on DevOps projects.

We also find embedded development, which includes IoT, to have entered the mainstream adoption. While embedded development attracts similar levels of interest to drones and robotics, it shows significantly higher levels of developer adoption. This may well be because the field has had time to establish itself. IoT, although still an emerging and somewhat nebulous area, has reached a point where the early hype has died down and the possibilities are better understood by developers and consumers alike.

Mini apps are a relatively new phenomenon. Running inside a mobile framework, they are isolated within a specific ecosystem, such as the popular WeChat app. They are written using HTML5 and other web technologies. Developers reported a high level of interest, and 10% adoption, placing them in the mainstream quadrant. Unsurprisingly, we found mobile developers to be particularly keen on this technology, with 22% adoption; the second highest technology of interest for mobile developers after robotics. We also found this to be the one area more highly adopted by women developers than by men.

 

WANING INTEREST

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) are used to increase the overall profitability of a business. CRM software is used to organise sales, marketing and customer services, while ERP is used to improve the efficiency of internal business processes. Fewer developers are active in this area than in DevOps, although it is the second most adopted technology area. However, the number of developers saying they simply were not interested in this area was the second highest, and the numbers of developers working in the area have dropped significantly since our last survey. ERP/CRM seems to be an area where interest is tailing off.

 

Want more?
The State of Developer Nation 16th Edition is now available to download for free.