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Business Community Interviews

Developer Heroes: Amanda the Iron Woman.

Developer Hero Amanda

Who? Developer hero Amanda Folsom, Developer relations manager

Cross-team communication is incredibly difficult…

[Developer Economics] Hello! Tell us about your role and what you do:

[Amanda Folsom]

I’m a Developer Relations (DevRel) Manager at Nexmo, which is a fancy way of saying I work on an awesome team who helps developers succeed.

What kind of languages do you work with?

DevRel is sort of interesting because I have to know a little bit about a lot of languages and frameworks, but most of my own projects are written in PHP using the Laravel framework. Day to day, I may touch some JavaScript and some Ruby with a little C# sprinkled in.

Developers all over the world are currently taking the SlashData survey. Will you be left out?

How did you get started?

My dad was a developer in the 90s so I grew up around computers. We built my first computer together in grade school and I discovered HTML and JavaScript (the early edition). I eventually moved on to PHP and, at the risk of dating myself here, made a Neopets clone. I still have the original codebase — it was written for PHP4.

How much do you think developers need to focus on specific frameworks or languages these days?

Over the last few years there’s been a heavy shift to framework-driven development. It’s common to see a specific framework or series of tools listed in job posts now. I think it’s important that developers focus on a specific set of tooling as that domain expertise is important, but it’s also important to keep tabs on what’s happening outside of their chosen framework or tool chain.

How much are you involved in buying decisions (in terms of technology platforms etc.) at you company?

As involved as I want to be. I have the freedom to pick and choose tools we use but I’m happy to let other people pick tools that work for them.

Do you think that there is a still a separation between developers and other business departments (e.g. marketing etc.)

Definitely. Cross-team communication is incredibly difficult and historically engineering teams and marketing/sales teams have different goals. Marketing and sales want to sell something (sometimes things that don’t exist yet) and I think it’s hard for them to understand why that makes developers uncomfortable. On the flip side, I think it’s hard for developers to understand how sales cycles work. Sometimes it takes months to close a deal, and the features that were promised may very well be available by the time the customer is ready to sign up.

Have you worked both Agency and Client-side?

Yep! Before working for companies I ran my own consultancy.

What are clients asking for right now in the world of cloud communications?

A lot of folks are just using SMS for 2FA, status updates, etc., but I’m starting to see people use IVR for more contextual phone menus. For example, if a customer calls in from a known phone number, you can look up their record and see if there are any outstanding issues related to their account. People are also looking for other ways to interact with their customers via mobile applications beyond sending and receiving texts and calls. In-app messaging is growing fast.

What projects are you working on right now?

For work? Mostly client libraries for our APIs and some data dashboards. In my spare time I manage a DNSBL and make various dinky web apps.

How helpful do you find developer surveys? [e..g. SlashData report – which seeks to help developers to make better business decisions, with salary benchmarks, trends, programming languages, framework choice etc etc]

They’re hit or miss. Some surveys are very well done while others have an obvious lean in favor of a specific tool or language. Salary benchmarks are also hit or miss because there’s a disparity between large company salaries and startup salaries. There are people who expect $200k+ at a bootstrapped startup simply because one of the large players would give them that much. At the same time, many of these salary surveys don’t factor in other benefits some of the startup folks get like equity, catered lunches, off-sites, and so on.

Do you think developers sometimes undersell themselves?

Absolutely. Imposter syndrome is alive and well in this industry, and people are overworking themselves to stay competitive and keep their skills sharp while actively stating that it’s not enough. The reality is that if you’re scheduled to work 40 hours and find yourself needing to work 80 there’s a time management problem somewhere. Either at the individual level or the management level.

So where do you go to get tech-related news?

A combination of Twitter, Hacker News, various Slack groups, some email newsletters, and mailing lists.

What’s going up and what’s going down in your industry?

Oddly enough, voice comms are trending upward. We’re seeing a lot of SMS activity still, but more people are starting to include voice services in their applications too.

What do you think the future looks like in terms of IaaS vs PaaS vs Containers vs Serverless?

This tweet about sums it up for me:

https://twitter.com/kelseyhightower/status/940259898331238402.

Right now we have a ton of tools designed to help people scale and distribute their applications, but everyone is still running into scaling issues. With serverless/IaaS/PaaS architecture, you run the risk of vendor lock-in with an inability to port your code outside of a specific platform. Containers solve some of the portability problems while introducing other problems with storage and performance. There’s no doubt that many people still find utility in these technologies, but many organizations seem to be transitioning back to bare metal servers or hybrid clouds.

Are you working on the projects you would like to work on?

Always.

Do you have a favourite superhero?

Iron Man. I have a collection of 1st edition Iron Man comics :).

Take SlashData’s developer survey and win some amazing prizes for your testing needs, including Pixel 2 5″ 64GB and an iPhone X.

Categories
Business Interviews

Developer Heroes: Meet Marcus from the Legion

developer hero

Who? Developer hero Marcus Noble, Senior software engineer

[Developer Economics] Hello! Tell us about your role and what you do:

[Marcus Noble] Hello! My name is Marcus Noble and I’m a senior software engineer at Elsevier working on their ecommerce platform.

What kind of languages do you work with?

Generally we work with web technologies: HTML, JavaScript and CSS. For a backend we primarily use TypeScript with NodeJS.

How did you get started?

My first experience of programming came when I was roughly 10 years old, using view-source to look at how websites were made and changing them in Notepad to see what happens. I think the first thing I completed was a DragonBall Z fan site.

Developers all over the world are currently taking the SlashData survey. Will you be left out?

How much do you think developers need to focus on specific frameworks or languages these days?

Very little. A solid understanding of programming principles and design patterns are far more valuable and transferable than knowing how to use the latest and greatest framework. I much prefer opting to use small libraries focusing on one feature over a full-blown framework to make it easier in the future to swap out bits of my application.

“Things get dull when you know exactly how to do everything.”

How much are you involved in buying decisions (in terms of technology platforms etc.) at you company?

A little. I can give input and my opinions on services but that decision is ultimately made by those above me.

Do you think that there is a still a separation between developers and other business departments (e.g. marketing etc.)

I think things are getting better but there is still a visible separation with the areas of the business that developers only have a small amount of interaction with. I’ve noticed that areas that have a vested interested in what the developers build seem to be increasingly more engaging with the development teams.

What projects are you working on right now?

I’m currently working on a new project to expand our current e-commerce platform to support business-to-business sales. The majority of the project will be greenfield applications so we’re able to experiment with some of the latest tools and practices to see what works best.

How helpful do you find developer surveys? [e..g. SlashData report – which seeks to help developers to make better business decisions, with salary benchmarks, trends, programming languages, framework choice etc etc]

I think they’re a great way of getting a sense of the wider community outside our immediate echo chamber. I predominately communicate with other JavaScript developers so that’s usually all I hear about. It’s always interesting to be able to be able to hear about the changes happening with Go or Rust or C++.

Do you think developers sometimes undersell themselves?

I’m pretty sure that isn’t limited to just developers. I’m sure we’ve all had moments where we’ve felt completely unable to do a task and thus try and downplay our abilities only to discover later that we could. Technology is such a broad subject area with many deep-reaching topics it’s very easy for us to become overwhelmed by it all and undersell the skills that we do have because of the skills we don’t have.

So where do you go to get tech-related news?

Mostly Twitter. I mainly use it to follow various technologists from around the world to keep up to date. I also receive a few weekly newsletters with the latest JavaScript and DevOps news.

Where do you think development time is likely or should be invested in the near future? Your opinion is valuable! Take SlashData’s new survey and contribute to shaping the future of the software development industry.

What’s going up and what’s going down in your industry?

I think the web browser is what’s going up. There’s been so many huge advancements in the past few years. So many incredible applications that once needed huge C/C++ codebases are being ported to run in the browser making them available to many more people on many more devices. With that in mind I think (hoping) unnecessary native mobile applications are going down. Many applications now have web apps with comparable features without the large storage requirements.

What do you think the future looks like in terms of IaaS vs PaaS vs Containers vs Serverless?

Hard to say. We’re currently looking at a mixture between containers and IaaS. Up to now we haven’t had much success with serverless infrastructure as I think the technology is still too young, comfortable monitoring and logging has been a struggle. Once the tooling has caught up I definitely think it has great potential to move a lot of applications away from an IaaS setup.

Are you working on the projects you would like to work on?

For the most part, yes. As long as I’m still learning new things I’m working on the right projects. Things get dull when you know exactly how to do everything.

Do you have a favourite superhero?

Yes, Legion. Why settle for just one super power?

Take SlashData’s developer survey and win some amazing prizes for your testing needs, including Pixel 2 5″ 64GB and an iPhone X.

Categories
Business Community Interviews

Developer Heroes: Meet Rachel a.k.a the Wonder Woman

Developer Hero

Who? Developer hero: Rachel Bilski

Where? Brighton, UK.

What? Web developer, agency-side

The new Developer Economics research survey is live – featuring thousands of developers all over the world! Participate now and let us know what your superpower is.

 Hello! Tell us about your role and what you do:

 I mainly work as a web developer, both front- and back-end. I do a lot of CMS work, with existing CMS platforms, and I also build content management systems from scratch, mainly working with PHP.

What kind of languages do you work with?

In the front-end, I use the standards – HTML, CSS, JavaScript. I also dabble with things like Python, Ruby on Rails. And of course PHP.

How did you get started?

Well the real story is that, when I was 13, I liked going to fan sites for Buffy the Vampire Slayer – so I learned how to build my own fan site through Lissa Explains it All. Which some developers may remember from back in the olden days!

Can we see that site on the Wayback Machine?

Can you see it? No, you cannot! But, the legit explanation of how I became a web developer is that I originally worked games development, then in QA which I didn’t really enjoy, so I moved to web development.

You’re agency-side. How do you think that compares with in-house development?

I like to say in-house is a little more straightforward, only because you get to work on a project for a long time, for years potentially. But in agencies, there’s usually a wider variety of work, and you have to be pretty flexible.  

What are clients asking for right now?

We get a lot of requests for emerging technologies now, but clients are not necessarily sure what to do with them. They’ll say: “we want to do something with VR or AR” or “we want to do 3D, 360 video or 3D worlds” or whatever. We have to guide them through the options.

How helpful do you find developer surveys?

If you’re a developer who works in an agency or a freelance developer, it’s easy to forget about the business side of things. And maybe you’re not a natural sales person. I mean it’s taken me a number of years to become more commercially minded, which helps me get involved in more business-related decisions about the tech we use and why.

Do you think developers sometimes undersell themselves?

Yeah, I would say so.

Have you found any challenges working in a male-dominated industry?

I’ve had both good and bad experiences. I work in a predominantly female developer team, which has been nothing but positive.

I also go to events for women in technology, because I like to talk to other women who are in my field. But, I’ve also experienced some negative things. Not always outright, but you do pick up on – to use a buzzword – microaggressions.

People can be dismissive. You know, sometimes if I go to a meeting with a male colleague, people will talk to him and ignore me even though on a technical front we’re at the same level. Which is another reason why I like to go to women’s groups because they don’t automatically assume you don’t know what you’re talking about.

You think things are changing?

I think some things are changing. There’s a lot more diversity programmes, not just for women but for LGBT groups and other minority groups.  

But, I think that until there’s a bigger culture change… it’s not that women don’t want to go into tech, it’s just they don’t want to go into this tech environment. They don’t want to go somewhere where they’re not wanted.

So where do you go to get tech-related news?

Well, Twitter. But there are also loads of developers on Reddit, though I rarely comment. But I do have a male-sounding handle on Reddit for when I do comment.

Has that actually helped?

Yeah, people take you far more seriously. In fact, a lot of women do the same thing. That’s sadly the way it has to be sometimes!

Get involved! The new Developer Economics research wave is live – featuring thousands of developers worldwide, from San Francisco to Singapore. Add your voice.

What’s going up and what’s going down in the software industry?

There’s been a lot of focus on how people are using messaging applications more at the moment and generalised open social media is a bit more in the decline, which is leading to a lot more of things such as chatbots which are really interesting, and artificial intelligence (or ‘fake’ artificial intelligence) which I personally find really interesting. From finance, to health, to learning, I think it’s a great way to make these products and campaigns more helpful and user-friendly, keeping up with how our use of technology is changing.

And there’s VR of course, that’s had a real surge over the last year or so as the kits become more affordable and more widespread, especially as use in business seems to be increasing.

Personally I think the use of (and requests for) mobile apps has really declined, as people have realised how much can be done with just the web alone, and more things are done using messaging platforms, people are realising you don’t need an app for every little thing – which is great, because it makes the web a little more open, you aren’t locked away in an app for each activity or company. Similarly, a couple of years ago, everyone wanted a Facebook application – you don’t see those anymore at all!

Are you working on the projects you would like to work on?

I am, I get to work on a real variety of projects which is great. I love the power of the web and what we can do with it now, so I love working on the more cutting edge projects we get to do sometimes, but even something as simple as building a website up from scratch – from just an idea and a goal to a fully formed website that helps people find what they need or helps get a message out there is wonderful. I love seeing our projects go from a quickly sketched wireframe to a real website.

I would definitely like to work with more artificial intelligence type stuff though – so I’m hoping we get some projects like that in soon!

Join the new Developer Economics survey – featuring thousands of developers worldwide. 

What super power  would you like to have and  what’s your favourite super hero ?

I don’t know!! I guess if I was a superhero I would like to have the ability to consume and understand huge amounts of information at a time…like a computer.

But it’s not a very good superpower.

My favourite superhero is Wonder Woman of course!

If you would like to feature in our Meet the Devs series, let us know.

 

Categories
Business Community

[Infographic] A story of how the buying centre of purchasing tools and components is now developers.

infographic developer economics survey

We recently announced the State of the Developer Nation Q3 2017, our popular semi-annual report based on key insights from the largest, most global developer research program. The State of the Developer Nation Q3 2017 report is based on the 13th edition Developer Economics survey, which looked into the most trending development topics including tools, SDKs, training, distribution channels and development resources. The report sheds light on current developer trends based on responses from over 21,200 developers globally, across multiple research areas including Cloud, Mobile, IoT, Desktop, Web, Augmented & Virtual Reality, and Machine Learning. Check out the infographic we designed to present key findings on this topic from the Q3,2017 Developer Economics survey.

In this edition, we reveal how developers have become key stakeholders in recent years when it comes to making technology decisions in companies. The report uncovers just how far their influence reaches. Our data shows that over 87% of developers with a leadership function no matter how small, as well as two thirds of front-line coders, are somehow involved in purchase decisions. The world of developer tooling has fundamentally shifted: it is no longer the purchasing department that vendors need to woo, but the developer who will use their tools on the floor, and their direct team manager.

 

infographic developers decision makers

Categories
Business Community

The Developer Economics survey Q3 2017: The winners

Developer Economics survey Q3 2017 Prize Draw Announcement

Welcome to the full rundown of the Developer Economics survey Q3,2017 (April-June) prize-draw winners. Below you’ll find a table comprised of the winners. We’ve listed the name and countries of all the people that have won and given us permission to share their details . For those where we are awaiting permission, their emails are displayed (but obfuscated for security reasons) and finally those who’d prefer not to share their details, we’ve simply displayed their initials and country.

Winners have already been notified by email – if you recognise the email fragment as yours and we haven’t contacted you, please drop us an email at survey@slashdata.co.

Please note that the list only includes prize-draw winners and not runner-ups. If the prize draw winners do not claim their prizes within the timeframe mentioned in the respective e-mail they received, then runner-ups will be asked to claim them instead.

General Prize Draw

Prize Draw Winner Country Prize
Artem P Ukraine Windows Dev Center – one-time registration fee for individuals
Mikhail B China Raspberry Pi 3
Bryan T USA Windows Dev Center – one-time registration fee for individuals
D.N Greece Windows Dev Center – one-time registration fee for individuals
Savic D Serbia Dell Venue 8 32 GB Tablet
E.H Albania Windows Dev Center – one-time registration fee for individuals
Eric S USA Ardunio Starter Kit
Ernesto C USA Dell Venue 8 32 GB Tablet
Eslian M South Africa Windows Dev Center – one-time registration fee for individuals
Firat E Turkey Hungry Code t-shirt
Hassan SH Egypt Hungry Code t-shirt
Kirill Z Russian Federation Windows Dev Center – one-time registration fee for individuals
Isemi E Canada 12-Month Xbox Live Gold Membership
James S USA iPhone 7
Peter M Bulgaria Fallout 4 Vault Boy Bomber White T-Shirt
Harrison K Kenya Dell Venue 8 32 GB Tablet
Konstantin D Bulgaria Windows Dev Center – one-time registration fee for individuals
L.T Malaysia Udemy course(s) up to $80
L.S USA Udemy course(s) up to $80
M.N USA Surface Pro 3
Diogo T USA Apple Developer Program annual fee of 99 USD
L.W Germany Pixel Phone
Miguelangel N Venezuela Merge VR Goggles
Naina M India Windows Dev Center – one-time registration fee for individuals
Niclas W Germany Windows Dev Center – one-time registration fee for individuals
Pratik R USA Merge VR Goggles
Shahroz N Pakistan Windows Dev Center – one-time registration fee for individuals
Alexandr S Russian Federation Windows Dev Center – one-time registration fee for individuals
Scott F USA Wink Hub 2
Supreem G India Samsung Galaxy J5
Fidel V Peru Apple Developer Program annual fee of 99 USD
Julian X China Fallout 4 Vault Boy Bomber White T-Shirt
Yvan D Belgium Windows Dev Center – one-time registration fee for individuals
a***onsu***y@**rp**lior.com UK Windows Dev Center – one-time registration fee for individuals
****mwa@gmail.com Keya a Machine Learning Coursera course (created by Stanford University)
an***@c***l.com.br USA Windows Dev Center – one-time registration fee for individuals
a***r.*at@**.pl Poland Hungry Coder t-shirt
ba****pr@yahoo.com Puerto Rico Apple Developer Program annual fee of 99 USD
b****ndo@gmail.com Italy Windows Dev Center – one-time registration fee for individuals
ca**@u****s.**i.ne.** Japan Ardunio Starter Kit
c****gje***20@gmail.com India Windows Dev Center – one-time registration fee for individuals
dr****rodin@gmail.com Russian Federation Raspberry Pi 3
d***e.ur**n@d***ed***rae.com USA Oculus Rift
gun***di@yahoo.com Turkey Hungry Coder t-shirt
h***co@gmail.com Israel Udemy course(s) up to $80
j****rakr***ari@gmail.com India Sublime Text 3 license
j***nev**x@hotmail.com France Dell Venue 8 32 GB Tablet
ku***an12***@gmail.com Russian Federation Ardunio Starter Kit
***evo73@gmail.com Singapore Windows Dev Center – one-time registration fee for individuals
m***g***oi4**4@gmail.com Vietnam Fallout 4 Vault Boy Bomber White T-Shirt
m***r@inf***tic.com Bangladesh Windows Dev Center – one-time registration fee for individuals
o***o@ya.ru Russian Federation Udemy course(s) up to $80
re***mat@mail.ru Russian Federation Apple Developer Program annual fee of 99 USD
r*g.n**@gmail.com Germany Fallout 4 Vault Boy Bomber White T-Shirt
ro***r@o2.pl France Windows Dev Center – one-time registration fee for individuals
sa***.ga**@gmail.com Spain Fallout 4 Vault Boy Bomber White T-Shirt
se**io_a***pe@hotmail.com Bolivia Windows Dev Center – one-time registration fee for individuals
th*****lus.m***ogu@***a.edu Kenya Raspberry Pi 3
w**.hei***r@gmail.com Malaysia Udemy course(s) up to $80

randomdraws.co.uk/cert/dpchj

===
Panel prize-draw

Prize Draw Winner Prize Country
c***es.col*@gmail.com Spain RedBubble gift certificate ($20)
Carlos L Spain K95 RGB PLATINUM keyboard
dan****ds0@gmail.com Italy GoPro HERO Session Camera 8mp
Derek W Australia My Passport 3TB
ger***d.v**as***en@lib***y.co.za South Africa RedBubble gift certificate ($20)
ja**ie*t@gmail.com United States RedBubble gift certificate ($20)
**e.m***hon@gmail.com United States RedBubble gift certificate ($20)
jo***r.s**ra*o@gmail.com Japan RedBubble gift certificate ($20)
k***mav**tal@gmail.com India Apple MacBook Pro 13-inch Laptop
George P Greece RedBubble gift certificate ($20)
na***pop****a@gmail.com Colomia RedBubble gift certificate ($20)
ngo***ua9*@live.com Vietnam RedBubble gift certificate ($20)
Maria M Venezuela RedBubble gift certificate ($20)
pa***op****u.c***sa@gmail.com Greece RedBubble gift certificate ($20)
re***eb@gmail.com India RedBubble gift certificate ($20)
si**er.f**ego**@gmail.com USA RedBubble gift certificate ($20)
t**yhsi***88@hotmail.com USA RedBubble gift certificate ($20)
**ngso**@gmail.com Vietnam RedBubble gift certificate ($20)
**am***nie@gmail.com Trinidad and Tobago RedBubble gift certificate ($20)

randomdraws.co.uk/cert/hzkcd

 

Categories
Platforms

Low-Code Platforms: Bringing Visual Programming Back (to Stay)

low-code-visual-programming

low code platforms

There’s an interesting trend in the second decade of this millennium. Things once declared “dead,” are experiencing a resurgence. For example, animated GIFs, once relegated to cheesy ads for home refinancing or losing belly fat in a month with acai berries, are back in Slack channels, social media and blogs everywhere. Email newsletters have returned after many corporations abandoned them as sales and marketing tools in 2008 or so. Podcasts were declared to have peaked sometime around 2010. Now, they’re back and there are almost too many to choose from. The consensus about the return of animated GIFs, email newsletters and podcasts is that they’ve improved in quality and offer more to people who use them.

Visual programming environments and platforms were also hot in the 1990s and the early 2000s. Then the noise they generated seemed to die down. And, now they’re back, very likely for good. Let’s look at why.

Too fast, too choppy, too inwardly focused and…it’s complicated

Visual programming has been around for much longer than we think. It started quietly enough in the 1960s with Bert Sutherland’s interactive programming language. The idea built up steam in the 1970s and 1980s (Smalltalk). The idea of moving away from text editing, compiling, writing down the errors, and debugging with the eyes was alluring. And, so it came of age in the 1990s with Visual Basic, Xelfi/Netbeans, Visual Studio and the height of the CASE tools hype.

 

Ah, the old Smalltalk days. Source: Basic Aspects of Squeak and the Smalltalk-80 Programming Language
Ah, the old Smalltalk days. Source: Basic Aspects of Squeak and the Smalltalk-80 Programming Language

 

So, there you have it. A whole slew of tools that could make programming so easy a child could do it. So, what happened? Why did visual programming virtually go gentle into that good night?

I think it’s because so much was still new in the 1990s and early 2000s. A whole lot of great digital and online stuff came out of that period very quickly. Take the World Wide Web, for example. It was going mainstream, but parts of it were more like the World Wild, Wild West. But I think that, in the rush to show the world the cool stuff the web and digital were bringing us, some steps were missed.

So, the visual programming tools of that period were really more about “look what we can do,” rather than “look at what you can do.” So, the end result of that philosophy is shaky extensibility (if there’s any at all), slow code generation and little to no cross-platform capability. In addition, in-depth programming skills and mindset were still the name of the game.

The only thing that’s constant is that nothing is constant

If there’s one thing I’ve learned since I started writing about programming languages and development trends in 1998, it’s that nothing is constant. When I invested in my first Mac in 1996, I had no idea I would replace it with a laptop just a few years later. And when I upgraded to one with an Intel Core i7 processor, I had no idea that it would end up gathering dust in my home office while I played with my smartphone and tablet in my living room.

In this mobile world, people want apps for almost everything. In addition, there are the other trends that are in the backlogs of today’s developers. These include solutions for cloud, machine learning, data science, artificial intelligence and IoT, as highlighted in “The State of the Developer Nation, Q1 2017,” the report compiled by Developer Economics. So, all of a sudden the already significant amount of knowledge you need to build software and applications in this brave new technological world has skyrocketed.

Most of you are developers, so I don’t need to tell you how difficult it is to be a full-stack unicorn in the age of “we need an AI and predictive analytics app for that on the cloud.” The Developer Economics surveys tell your story: your work can span multiple different areas, requiring mastery of several languages. Nor do I need to go on and on about the pressure to get these apps built and out in the marketplaces or stores ASAP or all the headaches that come with updates (new JavaScript libraries! Dependencies! Merges!). So, I’m going to skip all that and get to my point.

Now more than ever, we need to move away from the slow pace and nightmares of hand coding to something visual that makes development as easy as GUI interfaces make almost any computer task. But we don’t need the visual programming of the 1990s; we need something new and improved. And now we have it: it’s called “low-code.” An easy-to-understand name that Forrester coined in 2014.

Low-code is visual programming of the 1990s on steroids

Although low-code development includes visual programming, I want to be clear that this is not your father’s visual programming. Yes, it’s true that common code elements, workflows and business processes are turned into components so you can drag them around and drop them into a visual IDE.  But there’s even more to it than that. Application deployment, updates and generation are automated. You’re doing more than building applications visually using things that have survived the tests of time and software battles.

More specifically, rather than starting a project by hand-coding, some basic routing or writing a set of failing tests, you draw the shape of your application. You define the precise workflow your application needs to address each possible scenario. You draw the UI. You specify the data your application will store and how the database will store it. And, you use your visual IDE to integrate REST APIs with your application or integrate your applications with other systems, such as an SAP ERP.

So, instead of worrying how you’re going find the time to learn the latest faddish JavaScript framework or play with a cutting edge NoSQL data store, you’re delivering something valuable to the world in what seems like no time flat. Even better, you’re not sweating over DevOps or crying in your beer over application monitoring. So, basically, you’ve got something that’s miles ahead of what visual programming used to offer.

What about low-code platforms gives visual programming staying power?

The ability to leave the choppy, inwardly focused, released-too-fast ways of 1990s visual programming is becoming easier all the time. That’s huge. In the Forrester Wave: Low-Code Platforms Q2 2016, they rated the top 14 vendors of low-code development platforms out of a much bigger number. The fact that Google has thrown its hat in the low-code arena is another sign, as is a recent article in InformationWeek about low-code.

Here are the reasons I think low-code has brought visual programming back to stay:

  • Flexibility: You work in an IDE for visually defining the UIs, workflows and data models of your application but you can still add your own hand-written code (code you already know) where necessary,
  • Automated database integration. Low-code platforms transparently convert your data models into relational tables and SQL queries. And, data from external APIs is automatically made available from your application. This is not your typical ORM. It includes change management from the database all the way up to the UI.
  • No more deployment, maintenance and change nightmares. Automated tools build, debug, deploy and maintain the application in test, staging and production—sometimes with just one click.

Basically, everything that anyone ever complained about in forums related to visual programming is gone, and the parts people loved are still here.

And, while low-code platforms do require a little training, I’m not talking months of schooling here. More like a few weeks. Plus, low-code makes it possible to avoid having to know more languages and technology than I can count, all of which are needed to meet the demands of web and mobile application development. What’s not to love about that? You get to take a concept and build it into a working app without going back to school to learn six more things that have popped up in the last few months.

Conclusion: Low-code keeps the heart of visual programming beating

So, Justin Timberlake might have brought sexy back, but low-code has brought the heart of visual programming back. It takes what was good about the early days of visual programming but adds a big advantage. You can jump right in and start describing your solution to a problem. You don’t need to learn a whole bunch of arcane details. Deployment, updates, integration, all are fast and easy, mostly because the majority of those things are done for you automatically.

As a result, when a request comes in for an app that uses fitness and heart rate data to propose a specific exercise program for a heart patient—in 2 weeks—you can get right on it. How cool is that?

Interested in finding out how you compare to other software developers in your country/region? Take the Developer Economics survey and get your personalised developer scorecard.

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Platforms Tools

What types of tools are IoT developers actually using?

tools iot

IoT platforms were on the cusp of reaching the peak of inflated expectations in Gartner’s Hype Cycle from August 2016. Not surprisingly – there are literally hundreds of them, and counting. Also, the word ‘platform’ is used for anything, from network infrastructure to hardware components to cloud services. In the end, IoT owes its boom in popularity to more and better tools becoming available for developers. In this article, we shed some light on the types of tools that IoT developers are actually using.

The IoT tool market is still underdeveloped and heavily fragmented.

Despite the proliferation of IoT platforms and other tools, the IoT tool market is still underdeveloped and heavily fragmented. We asked IoT developers to select technologies they use out of a list of 15 categories. On average, IoT developers use 2.9 types of tools in that list, or one in five out of the list; professionals slightly more at 3.5 tool types. That’s comparatively fewer than developers in other sectors like cloud, mobile, or web, where developers use a quarter to a third of the tools listed. Part of the reason is fragmentation: not every tool is comprehensive enough to be relevant to a large number of developers. In part, the low tool usage is due to underdevelopment of the tool market. 11% of IoT developers don’t use any of the tools in our list, compared to 6% of web developers and 3% of mobile developers, who we presented with similar sized lists. Either way, we expect to see a good bit of consolidation and development before we can call this a mature tooling market.

Professional IoT developers use more tools than amateurs.

Professional IoT developers use more tools than amateurs, as we said, but they tend to use specific types of tools more often. The biggest differences are seen in categories like software deployment tools, IoT cloud platforms, embedded operating systems, machine learning platforms, gateway middleware, beacons, message brokers, or fog computing. What all these technologies have in common is that they are components of a complete IoT solution, i.e. technologies that an engineer would integrate under the hood to implement a valuable product or project. Fog or edge computing – championed by Cisco – is notable by its absence: a mere 4% of IoT developers are working with this technology. It may be too early for this technology, or the need for it might not be as big as pundits proclaim. Time will tell.

The gap between professional and amateur use is virtually non-existent in hardware platforms such as single-board computers like the Raspberry Pi or prototyping boards like the Arduino or Intel Edison. These microprocessors and computers have become so cheap and accessible (i.e. easy to use) that everyone with a minimal technical background can play around with them and put them to productive use. Even wearables toolkits and middleware show signs of this level of accessibility.

We also don’t see the amateur-pro gap in high-level, integrating platforms: Smart Home platforms like HomeKit or SmartThings, smartwatch platforms like WatchOS or Android Wear, or voice platforms like Amazon Alexa. These are all areas (IoT verticals) that are easy to get into, easy to imagine (and design) a solution that scratches your own itch, and therefore highly popular among hobbyists, as we’ve highlighted in other reports. Attractiveness to hobbyists aside, these comprehensive types platforms lower the barrier for people to start building meaningful solutions quickly, whereas the component technologies from above are still more the domain of specialists. Even health & wellness data platforms like Google Fit or HealthKit – arguably a more specific, advanced domain – have only a small difference in usage between professionals and amateurs.

Some of the technologies in the list are specific to certain verticals: wearables toolkits are for wearables developers, Smart Home platforms for Smart Home developers, and so on. Or are they? 12% of developers who use Smart Home platforms are not currently targeting or planning to target that vertical, for example. That is a reasonably big number, even though the usage gap with Smart Home developers is indeed clear. Some of these technologies might be fairly generic, and might even be ‘misused’ for unrelated projects. In some cases like smartwatch platforms, developers might work on a smartwatch app as part of a broader IoT solution, without self-identifying necessarily as ‘wearable developers’.

02https://www.developereconomics.com/reports/state-developer-nation-q1-2017

Only 20% of retail IoT developers use beacons

Location beacons are an interesting case. Their most marketed use cases were in retail and hospitality applications. However, only 20% of retail IoT developers use beacons; a good bit less than the 27% to 33% in-vertical usage we see for other vertical-specific technologies. Furthermore, the gap between in-vertical and out-of-vertical usage is only 9 percentage points, i.e. half that of the other technologies discussed here. We take this as a sign that beacons may be overhyped, perhaps technologically, but more likely in terms of how valuable the use cases are to customers. In our previous State of the Nation report (Q3 2016), we noted that retail was the sector within IoT with the fastest attrition of developers, possibly due to a sense of disillusionment and kickback from the hype. The data on technology use in the retail vertical seems to support that hypothesis.

The potential remains enormous

We opened this article with Gartner’s claim that we’re at the peak of inflated expectations when it comes to IoT platforms. Our IoT research over the past years says that we’ve already passed it, with stalled population growth and high churn among developers, heading full-speed towards the trough of disillusionment. The key reason is that the technology is still too immature, very few platforms are finding product-market fit, and thus the majority of consumer-focused developers lack a platform that gives them a viable market. Of course the core technology marches on, with some mostly consumer-focused tools finding uses outside their original intended market. The potential remains enormous. However, it’s going to get worse before it gets better, with a lot of consolidation among the many existing technology platforms.

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Business Community Tips

Job positions for Video Game designers

game designer

 

game design job positions

So, you know how to get into game designing, and you know that education and training standards you need to succeed – now all you need to do is get ahead of everyone else and begin to make headway as a game designer.

Once you have achieved the level of education or training needed for a career in game design, you can plan for your future in the industry. This begins with determining your career path, gaining experience, and creating your first game.

Determine a Career Path

Even within the specialty, there are many different types of game designers. Furthermore, game designers have diverse roles within their various positions which may not be obvious. This is why it is important for aspiring game design professionals to fully consider the type of game career they intend to pursue.

Senior Level Designer

This position is responsible for outlining the level objectives and game flow within a set and then is required to create the documentation for each level. A senior level designer should be able to create, position, and fine-tune game play elements and AI components.

Level Designer

This is a position subordinate to a senior level designer. Level designers will typically use the provided design documentation, including all mechanics, any guidelines, and the mission outlines to create and implement each of the game’s levels.

Lead Animator

Animators work in close collaboration with artists, programmers, and designers to create each aspect of the characters used in the game.

Gain Experience

Getting an entry level job with a large game studio can be a difficult proposition. Since most employers require some game design experience for most jobs, new game designers have to find creative ways to gain relevant experience.

Game Designer Internships

Some companies offer internships or co-op positions for beginner designers.

Go Small and Indie

Small businesses on a budget are often willing to hire game programmers or artists with little practical experience.

Coding for a Cause

There are some charities that require coding and game design. You can sign up and start writing code while gaining real-world experience.

Develop a Game

Game designers can create a buzz, get experience, and gain a competitive edge when they design and publish their own game. Utilise free programs to create a simple, engaging and interactive mobile game. Publish it for sale on the app marketplace. Then begin working on something more complex. Each game will add value to your portfolio and most importantly, it will count as design experience.

Game design is an exciting and fast-growing field. However, it is one of the most difficult to break into. To do so you need a clear direction and understanding of the industry, education and training requirements, and a strategy to succeed.

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Platforms

Angular vs React: Battle for the future of front-end web development?

angular react

Google and Facebook are two of the world’s most powerful companies and each has created a framework for building web apps. Angular and React respectively appear to be in a battle for the future of the web, with the active online debate and adoption for large consumer-facing apps seeming to lean quite strongly in React’s favour at present. Are they collectively taking over the front-end? Is React really leading? Our data from a broad cross-section of nearly 6,000 web developers may surprise you.

angular vs react

Which is your favourite framework? Take the Developer Economics Survey and win amazing prizes.

Although traditional, largely static, web pages still have an important place, mobile is now the dominant computing paradigm and mobile users have come to expect the interactivity of native apps. To attempt to match a native app experience, a web app cannot be entirely rendered on the server side, the page has to be changed dynamically on the client. The more extensive the changes the greater the need for a better abstraction than the DOM (Document Object Model) to manage the complexity. This has driven ever growing usage of third-party JavaScript libraries and frameworks.

Historically jQuery was the first library to get really popular, enabling easier manipulation of the DOM on the client side. It’s still the most popular today, as the primary front-end library for 34% of web developers. However, manually manipulating the DOM turns out to be extremely complex and error-prone when it’s happening extensively, so frameworks that provide a better abstraction are increasingly important. Overall just 12% of web developers don’t use any kind of framework and another 6% have written their own. That leaves 48% of web developers currently using a third-party framework other than jQuery as their primary way of doing front-end web development. Of those, Angular and React account for 30% of all usage, leaving all the others far behind. Indeed front-end web development is such a fragmented space that no other single library or framework accounts for more than 2% of primary usage. So React and Angular certainly lead other frameworks, although only around half of all web developers have fully embraced any single page application framework so far.

Angular is still king despite the React hype.

AngularJS (Angular 1.x) was the first single page app framework to get the stamp of approval from an internet giant, when Google started to back the open-source side project of one of their employees publicly. Google’s backing gave many large enterprises the confidence to adopt, and with broader adoption came a flourishing ecosystem of components and tools. As this was happening, React was built internally at Facebook and deployed on the Facebook newsfeed in 2011 and then Instagram’s web app in 2012. Yet React wasn’t released as open source until 2013, by which time Angular had an enormous lead in both adoption and ecosystem. Then in late 2014 Google appeared to stumble previewing Angular 2.0, which was going to be incompatible with Angular 1.x and use a new language. Reaction from the developer community was not good. By mid-2015 Google had agreed to work with Microsoft so that TypeScript became the official language for Angular 2.0, while the 1.x series had a promise of continued support, and a migration path between versions was created. This discontinuity for the Angular community seemed like a gift to the already rapidly growing React.

Although Angular still had many vocal fans, anyone following the broader front-end web developer community online would have to assume that React was taking Angular’s crown. At the time of writing React has passed Angular 1.x in terms of stars on their respective GitHub projects, with around 61,500 to 55,000. Angular 2.x trails both of these by far with 21,500. In the independent State of JavaScript survey run in late 2016, React came out way ahead of both versions of Angular in usage, interest, and retention. However, our own survey, which reaches out across many different developer communities does not reflect this result overall at all. Not only is Angular 2.x the primary framework for about as many developers as React (10% vs 9% globally), but Angular 1.x is still the most popular overall by a slim margin (11% use it as their primary framework). In total those using one or the other version of Angular number more than double those using React.

angular vs react

React is favoured by front-end specialists.

In order to see how reality in the market could be so different from the online buzz and even a large community survey, it’s interesting to look at the breakdown of JavaScript library and framework usage by primary programming language. If we only look at the users of the latest versions of JavaScript – those who like to stay at the forefront and are more likely to be found debating framework choices on the internet – we see React is the primary framework for 27% of them. So amongst those who have made the switch to ESNext (i.e. the 2015 version of the JavaScript standard or later), who then use tools to convert their code to the JavaScript that’s widely supported in browsers (known as ES5, introduced back in 2009), more are using React than both versions of Angular combined. However, this is the only group of developers for which React beats either version of Angular alone. These forward-looking JavaScript users are less than half of those primarily using JavaScript, and just 16% of all web developers (who almost all use some JavaScript).

A further 18% of web developers are still primarily using ES5. More of these are currently still using Angular 1.x (21%) as their primary framework than Angular 2.x (9%) and React (8%) combined. These developers are getting on with what they know and are productive doing. They may be following the new standards and frameworks but most of them don’t see enough benefit in switching yet. Another 3% of all web developers are primarily using TypeScript, which could be seen as the most advanced version of JavaScript currently available. However, some web developers understandably don’t want to adopt anything not yet in the standards, others don’t want to use the optional static types, and a significant minority still avoid anything from Microsoft. Given that Angular 2.x has adopted TypeScript it’s not surprising to find 41% of those primarily using the language have adopted the framework. There are another 18% currently still using Angular 1.x that will most likely migrate to Angular 2.x.

Backend web developers prefer Angular on the front-end.

After some flavour of JavaScript, the most popular language for web developers is PHP, with 21% still considering it their primary language. Given the focus on rendering pages server-side in most of the popular PHP content management systems, it’s not too surprising to find less interest in single page app frameworks in general amongst these developers, with 52% still using jQuery as their primary library. Interestingly only 3% of PHP developers are primarily using Angular 1.x, with 8% on Angular 2.x, and just 4% for React. In fact almost as many PHP developers don’t use any library or framework for the front-end (14%) as use React plus either Angular version.

Developers primarily using server-side languages other than JavaScript/Node.js or PHP (totalling 42% of all web developers) are significantly less likely to be using jQuery than PHP developers but they are also significantly less interested in Angular and React than the JavaScript developers (26% vs 38%). When they do primarily use one of these front-end frameworks, far more choose Angular (20%) than React (6%), and more of the Angular users are on version 2.x (11%) than version 1.x (9%). Considering all of those who are server-side developers not using Node.js, which is 63% of the web developer population, Angular is significantly preferred to React at this point, probably because it is complete framework, rather than forcing the developer to make lots of other library and tooling choices as they currently have to with React.

What happens next?

There are a many alternative futures that could be inferred from this data. The simplest story would be that framework preferences won’t move much for the different groups. Server-side developers will continue to have relatively little interest in the front-end frameworks and ES5 developers will stick to Angular 1.x when they eventually transition to ESNext or TypeScript. This doesn’t fit the current trend of increased JavaScript usage across the web, front-end and server. It also ignores the fact that Google will be migrating to Angular 2.x internally and developers will not want to be left without support one day. We could also imagine that as developers start using ESNext or TypeScript their framework preferences shift accordingly. Both React and Angular gain greater share, with React growing faster than Angular.

There’s probably some truth in this, but it’s too focused on the front-end developers. Server-side developers who aren’t using Node.js are less likely to find React attractive without a much simpler learning curve for the ecosystem. Then again, the most popular PHP framework is still WordPress, and the company behind WordPress has chosen React as the new front-end framework for WordPress.com – many PHP developers may follow them. Facebook has significant momentum with React, but Angular is likely to remain the most popular for smaller projects and internal apps. What we can predict is that despite the inevitable churn on the front-end, both frameworks have successfully built a critical mass of developers creating valuable ecosystems, and both are set for significant growth in the years ahead. We’d be surprised if the 30% of web developers using either Angular or React didn’t become 40% in the next 2 years.

So, what do you prefer? Angular or React? Take the Developer Economics Survey and win amazing prizes.

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Business Tips

How can developers improve their paycheck.

developer pay check

As a software developer, what is the most lucrative opportunity you could be working on? This is a very relevant question to ask. Software skills are generally scarce and good developers are highly coveted. Furthermore, developers are mobile, in the sense that the nature of their trade allows them to work from remote locations quite easily and marketplaces for their services are well established. So which project should you pick to improve your paycheck?

developer salary

There are many reasons why someone might prefer one job over another, but let’s be honest: developers deserve to get paid well, given their important position in the global value chain. For the first time in 12 editions, we asked developers in our survey how much they earn in salaries or contractor fees. The results are in and from the data we learn several insights that can help developers improve their paycheck, and conversely, provide opportunities for organisations to find talent.

First, there are enormous differences in how much developers in each region and software sector earn. The best earning developers in our survey – those in the top ten percent – often earn tens and sometimes hundreds of times as much as the least well-off, i.e. the bottom decile. Part of this gap is location-driven. We’ll come back to that shortly. This said, we can only conclude that a developer’s skill, knowledge, and reputation do matter. Investing in them will pay off.

Developers working in areas with a higher technical complexity generally earn more.

Talking of skills, developers who work in areas with a higher technical complexity – and therefore higher barriers to entry and ultimately fewer developers doing it – generally earn more. Developers that work on cloud computing and other backend services report higher salaries than those working on front-end web apps. Machine learning specialists make even more than the backend folks. In Western Europe, for example, the median web developer has a yearly gross salary of $35,400 USD, the median backend developer earns $39,500 and a machine learning developer makes $45,200. This relationship is seen across regions and also at higher wage levels. Web and mobile development are the most commoditised; there is a fairly low barrier to start making simple apps or websites, and these tasks are relatively easily outsourced to other regions.

Scarcity of skills drives up paycheck amounts for developer services.

Scarcity of skills drives up the price for developer services. This is also true for new, emerging areas of development, like Augmented and Virtual Reality, or the Internet of Things, but only at the top end of the scale.The best developers in emerging areas earn top dollar, while the bottom half of the developer population makes less than their counterparts in more established sectors. Let’s compare Augmented Reality (AR) with backend developers in North America as an example. The median wage for an AR developer in that region is $71,000 USD, a good bit less than the $79,200 that the median backend developer makes. At the top end, however, AR development is more lucrative. At the 75th percentile, the AR developer is paid $132,300 and the backend developer $122,800. At the very top (90th percentile), the difference is even more pronounced: $219,000 for AR, $169,000 for backend. The reason for this wide range of salaries is that markets like AR/VR or IoT are still commercially underdeveloped. Companies that are early adopters pay large sums for skilled developers, who are scarce. At the same time, less experienced developers are attracted by the hype. Their compensation suffers both from a lack of relevant skill and from a lack of companies that are hiring in the early market.

Again this pattern repeats across regions. The exception is South Asia. The outsourcing model that drives software development in that region seems to be built on maintaining legacy code and developers there are less involved in emerging innovations (a conclusion that’s also supported by our developer population sizing research).

Developer-wages

We’re still a long way off a global market for developers!

We started this chapter by saying that developers can market their services location-independently if they choose to. However, it’s clear from the data that we’re still a long way off a global market for developers! The median web developer in North America for instance earns $73,600 USD per year. A Western European web developer earns half of that – $35,400 USD – although recent exchange rate shenanigans due to Brexit and the Euro-crisis will have affected that comparison. Web developers in other regions earn again half of that: between $11,700 in South Asia and $20,800 in Eastern Europe. Not just the region of the world you live in matters, but also the country and even the city you call home.

This opens up opportunities for organisations who will accept remote workers. You can hire a top 10% Eastern European backend developer for less money than the median North American wage in that sector. For developers, it means that brushing up your English skills and looking for opportunities beyond your backyard can be very interesting indeed. Developers who take that leap and seek opportunities that pay to international standards are in the minority. This explains why top wages in emerging regions (Asia, the Middle East, Africa) are so exuberantly high compared to local standards. A Western developer in the top decile earns about three times as much as the median wage in his sector and region. In the emerging world, top wages are seven to ten times the median. The best developers in those regions work for multinationals or sell their services on international marketplaces, while most stay employed locally, at much lower remuneration levels.

So what’s a developer to do if you want to move up in the world, financially? Invest in your skills. Do difficult work. Improve your English. Look for opportunities internationally. Go for it. You deserve it!

Take our Developer Economics Survey and speak out about other challenges you face!