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How Does Collaborative Coding Work?

We could always do with an extra pair of eyes or another brain to work on our projects. That’s why collaborative coding can be such a useful tool for programmers looking to speed up their development process. 

By working on your code with either a team or with one other developer, you can finish your project more quickly while also reducing the amount of errors and bugs – after all, they’re a bit more helpful than the traditional rubber duck.

However, programming is often seen as an independent process, so how exactly does collaborative coding work? We’ll explain that, plus its different benefits and drawbacks, and how you can make it work in your organization. 

What is collaborative coding?

Collaborative coding simply refers to any process that involves more than one person working together on a piece of code. In the past, this might have had to take place in an office around a couple of computers but today you can download RealVNC’s MAC remote desktop or other remote working technology to collaborate on code from anywhere in the world. 

There are three specific types of work that come under the umbrella of collaborative coding. You might have heard of pair programming, which is when two programmers pair up to work on a project. When more than two people work together, this is referred to as mob programming. 

The final form of collaborative coding – code sharing – is less about a collaborative process. Instead, it’s when code that has been developed independently is shared in order to let other developers debug or review it. Code sharing is already widely used in open source projects – that’s why we’ll be focusing on pair and mob programming.

The benefits of collaborative programming

Ultimately, regardless of whether you use a pair programming or mob programming model, collaborative coding is about working together. But what’s the point of collaborative coding? Here are the main benefits:

1. Increased efficiency

Improving efficiency and productivity is a key goal of any business, whether that’s a huge restaurant, a small business phone service provider, or a software developer. 

Collaborative coding allows you to work through issues with someone else, meaning that you can draw on another career’s worth of experience and problem-solving. When it comes to producing new ideas, you’ll also find that collaborative working will let you get to appropriate creative ideas more quickly. 

Efficiency will also improve in the more technical aspects of your code. With two or more pairs of eyes looking over your code, you’ll be able to spot mistakes sooner. As well as this, you’ll be able to establish an instant and informal process of code review and feedback, meaning that your code will be successful as early as possible.

2. Better resilience

When a project is the sole responsibility of one developer, all it takes to knock that project off track is a bout of flu. As well as this, you can be forced to abandon long-term projects altogether if a developer leaves the organization. 

Using collaborative coding will mean that these risks are significantly decreased by spreading responsibility for projects across multiple developers. If a programmer becomes ill, for instance, coding can continue without them, meaning that your projects are more resilient and safeguarded against disruptions.

3. Easier training and onboarding

When new developers join your organization, there are few better ways for them to get to grips with how you do things than by working with an experienced programmer. This means that adopting a model of collaborative coding will make it easier to onboard new recruits.

Using pair programming is also a great way to ensure that more experienced programmers are constantly developing their practice. Without this, developers can become stuck in their ways: collaborative coding is an innovative way that you can encourage cross-training in different programming languages, for instance.

Collaborative coding challenges

While there are many benefits, it’s also important to consider some of the issues that come with collaborative coding:

1. Higher costs

When you’re viewing collaborative coding from a financial perspective, you’ll soon come to the realization that you’ve now got two developers being paid for a job that you previously had just one developer working on. 

This means that collaborative coding will often bring higher initial costs – however, these overheads can be overcome in the long term as you see the quality and speed of your programming improve. Additionally, the increased resilience means you’re less likely to end up starting projects from scratch when unexpected situations come up.

2. Communication problems

Programmers are often used to working independently – collaborative coding, on the other hand, requires almost constant communication between team members. This is essentially a separate skill that needs to be developed over time, so developers new to collaborative coding may struggle to communicate effectively as they code. 

Starting people off on smaller projects and pairing up the right people with the right skills can help. And don’t forget to provide training, particularly if you’re using collaborative platforms, as you want to ensure everyone on the team gets the most out of it.

3. Platform requirements

As well as requiring a new form of communication, collaborative coding may demand different platforms and technology. Luckily, there are lots of platforms that are specifically designed for collaborative coding that work both in-office and remotely.

You might also find that you have to invest in other pieces of software to make the collaborative process as smooth as possible, from on demand remote support software to a team messaging app. While these platforms are easily accessible, this nevertheless presents an additional upfront cost.

Making collaborative coding work for you

With these challenges in mind, how can you make collaborative coding work for you? Here are our best practices for collaborative coding:

1. Find the right platform

When looking for a platform to host your collaborative coding efforts, you need to invest in one that is perfect for your needs – think about the size of your team (and whether you’re planning to scale further), your preferred programming languages, and its ease of use. You should also look out for platforms that have advanced security measures to protect you against malicious software or cyberattacks. 

While you’ll be able to continue using testing software, you’ll also want to consider whether your existing development software is able to streamline effectively with your new collaborative platforms. 

In addition, consider project collaboration tools like Jira, which allow developers to plan, track, and work faster when coding software. Encourage teams to collaborate on deploy previews when using these tools, so together they can test and review any code changes before deploying to a live environment.

2. Create balanced teams

Of course, the platform will mean nothing if you don’t have the right people using it. You’ll want to make sure that your collaborative coding teams include a range of different skills and experiences – there’s no point in pairing up two experienced developers who use the same programming languages and who have the same expertise as each other. 

In order to help you create balanced teams, you might want to create the equivalent of an online directory for your organization: list your programmers, their relevant skills, and their personal qualities.

3. Assign clear roles

Once you’ve created a collaborative coding team, you should make sure that every member knows exactly what their responsibilities are. In pair programming, a common distinction is between the ‘driver’ (who actually writes the code) and the ‘navigator’ (who keeps larger goals in mind). These roles can be swapped regularly to keep things fresh.

In larger teams, it’s still important that everyone has a clear role. This will keep everyone focused on their specific task, while also ensuring that you allocate human resources effectively by giving individual programmers roles that best suit their abilities and skills; you’ll also be able to give junior and senior developers jobs that reflect their experience.

4. Communicate consistently and regularly

Having clear roles will also help with another key part of collaborative coding: communication. This is because developers will know who to talk to according to their problem or focus. 

As well as this, you need to be sure to establish a consistent and regular routine of communication. When coding with others, constant communication will help programmers to spot errors and work together to overcome issues and problems. 

This is an essential part of pair programming, but mob programming is also reliant on strong communication. A team of developers producing a remote desktop for Android phone, for instance, will need to have programmers working together to ensure that the final app is coherent and effective.

Collaborative coding – take your programming to the next level

Collaborative coding – whether that’s pair programming or mob programming – is a great way to boost the productivity of your coding projects, as well as to ensure that the overall quality of your code is improved. 

There’s a range of different ways that collaborative coding can work. However, for it to be a success you’ll need to make sure that you use the right platform, assign people to the right teams, create clear roles, and maintain regular communication. With this, you can be sure that collaborative coding will take your code to the next level. 

Finally, if you want to learn more about collaboration, you might also be interested in our post on How to Develop and Improve Collaboration in DevOps Teams– it’s full of great insights and provides a step-by-step guide.

Bio:

Sam O’ Brien – Vice President of Marketing

Sam O’Brien is the Vice President of Marketing for RealVNC, leading providers of secure, reliable remote access solutions. He is a growth marketing expert with a product management and design background. Sam has a passion for innovation, growth, and marketing technology. Sam has written for other domains such as Debutify and Cloudways. Here is his LinkedIn.

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Community News and Resources

Shaping the future of Developer Space: Start here.

It’s, no doubt, one of the fastest moving tech eras in the history of technology. From artificial intelligence and machine learning to blockchain and virtual reality, emerging technologies are transforming entire industries and redefining the way we interact with the world around us. 

For software developers , keeping up with the latest technologies has never been more crucial. By continually testing your knowledge and understanding of these technologies, you can utilize those capabilities to their greatest potential, making your life simpler, faster and more efficient. But where do you start?

Our brand-new Developer Nation survey is now open for developers who’d like to test their standing with the latest technologies and leave their mark in shaping the future of developer space. To help you get a better understanding of who we are, what we do and what it feels like to be a part of our developer community, we’ve also compared the Developer Nation Survey with the surveys offered by other developer communities, like Stack Overflow, across a variety of parameters to help you make the choice for yourself. 

Now, read on and unleash the incredible power of your voice!

Developer Nation Survey: Your Voice Matters

Developer Nation survey is the leading research programme that focuses on capturing and analyzing the trends in the developer ecosystem by inviting the participation of developers within the Web, Mobile, Desktop, Cloud, DevOps, Industrial IoT & Consumer Electronics, AR/VR, Apps/extensions for 3rd party ecosystems, Games, Machine Learning & AI, and Data Science fields. Some of the questions we ask revolve around your favourite tools and platforms, the projects you’re currently working on, your perspective on the software development cycle, and more. 

Why does your voice matter? Because it helps shed light on the challenges, trends, and opportunities within the developer community. With developers being the backbone of technological advancements and innovation, your opinion can directly influence the tools, programming languages, and industry standards of tomorrow

Many big tech companies trust our unique data insights in helping them understand developers better and shape their strategies. Here’s how Okta uses our data – your voice, to unlock more developer opportunities.

By participating in the Developer Nation Survey, you’ll be able to not only gain valuable insights and learn about the latest trends, but also have a chance to share your voice and ensure that your unique perspective is considered in shaping the future of software development. 

Comparing Prominent Developer Surveys

While these surveys focus on grasping the essence and behaviors of the developer community, they offer unique perspectives and insights across different dimensions, such as location, prizes, developer communities, loyalty programs, and average reach. 

Focus point

The Developer Nation Survey offers a global perspective, covering a wide range of topics and trends that impact developers worldwide. It emphasizes inclusivity and collaboration, ensuring that diverse voices and experiences are represented in shaping the future of software development. On the other hand, the Stack Overflow Developer Survey and Offerzen’s State of the European Software Developer Nation Survey have a narrower focus, and, therefore, offer localized insights and shed light on the challenges and opportunities within particular regions. 

To reach a wider and more diverse audience, we also translate our Developer Nation surveys in 10 languages  and make it available in 165+ countries, making it accessible and convenient for people who are not native English speakers. 

Loyalty program

With the mission of helping developers be their best selves, we place great importance on giving back to our community by sharing valuable insights and data, helping them set the right foundations for their careers, discover opportunities for professional growth and reward them for active participation with our loyalty program. Give us your feedback, participate in our survey production process or complete the survey to gather points, unlock special benefits and win prizes! 

Prizes

We understand that there is no ‘one size fits all’ approach. As a result, we try to bring in many exciting rewards which can be useful, practical and high-tech. Compared with other communities, we offer a wide range of different prizes and here’s what you can get your hands on by taking part in our Developer Nation survey:  cards and vouchers towards your desktop setup, a MacBook Pro13 M2, an Asus ZenBook13, annual or monthly licenses, courses credits to learn something new, and many more. Plus, everyone who completes the survey will get a free virtual goody bag with access to free resources. So, why not take your chance to get something you always wanted?

Giving back to the community

We make recurring donations to the charity of your choice. For each qualified survey response we donate USD $0.10 to different charities and organizations supported by our developer community. Our goal is to reach USD $1,700 in donations. Take the survey, pick a charity to support, and help us make a difference!

the future of Developer Space

What we do with the data 

We protect your privacy by anonymising all your answers. Those results are then available in the free State of the Developer Nation 25th Edition report, which you can be the first one to have access to by taking our survey! If you’re interested in the insights we offer in our reports, check out the previous editions here.

We exchange those insights regarding emerging trends among developers to help individuals responsible for developing tools and platforms in understanding the genuine needs of software creators. Our research remains independent, meaning that our surveys and data are not owned by any vendor, community, or other affiliated partner.

As for our survey methodology, we keep it transparent by making our sampling and analysis methods available in all our reports on developernation.net, free to download for all developers.

Ready to kick things off? Start the survey now!

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Community

State of Developer Wellness report: 83% of developers report feeling burnout at least occasionally

Listening to developers feedback in recent years, it became clear that our community members face anxiety, burnout and are trying to find ways to improve their overall health and wellbeing. 

We wanted to learn more about their experiences and with this week being Mental Health Awareness Week in the UK (15th – 21st May) it seems fitting to announce the launch of our State of Developer Wellness report. The report provides insights from our Developer Nation community including workplace experiences, burnout, mental wellbeing, happiness and lifestyles.

We hope that report will raise awareness around the importance of work well-being for developers and creators, and encourage more discussions within developer communities.

Our State of Developer Wellness Survey reached 870 respondents from 91 countries around the world. 

The report covers:

Distribution of Developers based on their Workplace Setup 

Remote work, how it affects their mental wellbeing, do developers feel their employers care about their wellbeing

Developer burnout

How often developers have felt burnout in the last three months, how they decompress and relieve stress, are they successfully managing their workplace stress?

Developer Happiness and Health Lifestyles

We encourage everyone to read the report and share it with your colleagues and peers. Let’s build on a culture of wellness that promotes the mental, physical and emotional wellbeing of the developer industry! 

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Community

The 24th Developer Nation Survey to donate $2,607 to causes supported by the community

The Developer Nation surveys are committed to giving back to the community in multiple ways. We do so by sharing the data and insights we collect. We also donate to causes aligned with our mission. The donation program has become a core element of our surveys, and we have realised that it is essential for the community. 

How does it work? 

For each survey wave that we run,  we donate 0.10$ to the favourite charities of our Developer Nation Community. The goal is to reach at least $2000 in donations.

What happened during the 24th Developer Nation survey? 

During our 24th Developer Nation global survey, we collected a surprising total of 26,289 qualified responses meaning that we could surpass our goal by donating $2,607!- and support the causes you care about. 

We always prioritise developer-centric organisations, helping software developers excel in their career and personal development. Nevertheless, we support other causes that matter a lot to our community. 

Embracing transparency, we list below the organisations we supported with our donations. The amounts correspond to how the respondents of the Developer Nation survey voted for them.

Free Code Camp 

The mission of freeCodeCamp is to help people learn to code for free. I’m personally a huge fan of the work they are doing and have learned quite a bit from there. A total of 9183 survey participants picked them for support so we could donate $918 to freeCodeCamp.

Girls Who Code 

Girls Who Code is on a mission to inspire, educate, and equip girls with the computing skills to become change agents in their communities. A total of 6,423 survey participants picked them for support so we could donate $642 to Girls Who Code.

Raspberry pi foundation and Coder Dojo 

The Raspberry pi foundation empowers young people to use computing technologies to shape the world while CoderDojo helps enhance and build tech skills in an informal, creative and social environment. A total of 6,515 survey participants picked them for support so we could donate $652 to the Raspberry pi foundation and Coder Dojo.

World Wildlife Foundation

WWF is on a mission to protect threatened species and their habitats.  A total of 3,953 survey participants picked them for support so we could donate $395 to the World Wildlife Foundation.

A small number of Donations from DN Prizes

In each survey, we give developers the option to donate the cash value of their prize to one of the charities we support. We’re pleased to share that developers donated an additional $315 from their prizes! We’re thankful for their generosity! The initial goal was to donate around $1,800 but we ended up smashing our goal by donating $2,607!

Conclusion

Giving back to the broader community is at the very core of our mission. We are grateful and also proud of our community members for embracing our program and contributing to it. Being community-led, this effort could not be without your valuable contributions.  Please share your thoughts and suggestions for future donations using the donation program section of our forum.

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Community Tips

The Developer Advocacy Universe

In this episode of the Developer Nation Broadcast we welcomed Adrienne Tacke, Senior Developer Advocate at Cisco. Adrianne spoke about her current role, her focus and the challenges she is facing. She also walked us through her journey and how she landed in the developer advocacy universe.

Adriane   

Hi, Ayan. Really great. Really happy to be here. Thank you for having me on Developer Nation. 

Ayan  

Yeah, I’m really excited for this episode, especially given the fact that we both are developer advocates, I’m sure I’m going to be learning a lot of things from you today, as well as our community members who are mostly developers, but I’m pretty sure many of them would be interested in a career in developer relations and could learn a thing or two from you. So, for our community members, could you just introduce yourself referring to what you are currently working on and also giving an overview of your career journey? 

Adriane   

Sure, I’ll give the short version so we can go into more depth a little later. I’m a Senior Developer Advocate at Cisco.. My journey pretty much started by accident as a lot of the things in my career have, I never sought out to be a developer. I never studied computer science. I actually majored in Management Information Systems. And I got into software development through an internship, mostly because I needed a way to pay for college.  

So, I found a student internship that focused on software development, and found out that I actually liked doing this stuff as I was interning. And from that point on, I worked at several different medium to large sized companies around the Las Vegas Valley as a dotnet developer, then slowly kind of merging into the JavaScript land and some of the other front-end frameworks.  

Before, again, accidentally landing at developer advocacy, prior to Cisco, I was actually at MongoDB, also as a senior developer advocate. And that’s another story you can ask me about. I kind of fell into it, because I was actually sharing my journey on conference speaking. And MongoDB reached out and said; Hey, would you like to apply for this job? And I said, is this a job?  That’s super cool. I didn’t know that. And so, I did. And that’s kind of how I got to this point in developer advocacy. 

Ayan  

Well, that’s really interesting, because given the fact that you did not know that this sort of job exists and  now you are fully embracing it, going out to different conferences, giving talks and actually evangelizing for the company that you’re working for. So, tell me a bit more about that internship. Was it basically about learning development? Or was it more about how computer science in general works? What sort of internships do you have back in the days? 

Adriane   

So, at that time, like I said, I wasn’t even sure what I was going to do. And I actually found it through my student job. So even before the internship, the job that I found was for an IT Helpdesk position. So, if you needed your passwords reset, if you needed help troubleshooting your computer, both students or professors, I was the person you call to try to help troubleshoot that. And it was through this job that I found this internship. So, this internship was focused on software development to help in particular, the university’s Office of Information Technology. And at that time, the language that I worked in was actually VB dotnet, and also working with some Google API’s.  

This position focused on helping the email administration system of the university, which at the time was at Google, we were using Gmail. A lot of that was really learning what development was about because I had no idea so I was very lucky to actually have a full team of all women as my first software development team. And I’ve never actually had that sense, which is kind of funny but focused on learning how to work with SQL and how to write queries that would grab all of the accounts that needed to be either disabled or retroactively brought back if they were, you know, a student coming back. I worked with Google API’s.  

So, with a little bit of front end and learning with API’s, how to work with Google’s interface to create accounts, how to add information, how to send all that information through to Google to administer those accounts for the email for the university system. And then I worked with a bunch of other different people. So that internship was very foundational for me in terms of learning what software development is, what the types of teams you would work with, and what kinds of things you could do. But at the time, the major project I worked on was the email administration system for the university. 

Ayan  

What do you think about the influx of the next generation of software developers and computer science enthusiasts coming into the industry without necessarily having a computer science degree?  They’re pursuing some certifications or training programs, and they are very well developers, they are able to find their way in open source contributions and find their place into the industry. So, do you think that it’s okay to not have a professional degree and use these courses instead?  Is it very much possible to build a career and grow it? Or do you think that the degree would also be helpful? 

Adriane   

I think there’s a two-part answer to that for me in the experience I’ve seen so far.  

​​​Number one, you absolutely do not need a computer science degree, I have seen that throughout some of the best developers I know, who don’t have a computer science degree, they really just have a knack for learning. They want to know what the latest and greatest is, or they pick a specific topic that they really want to get well versed in, and they just continue learning as much as they can, building as much as they can. You absolutely do not need a computer science degree to be successful. That’s a fact. 

The second part to that answer is, that this doesn’t mean that a computer science degree is not helpful, or that you don’t need it, I think if you have both, you actually put yourself forward and you have a leg up on a lot of other developers who also have a degree by doing the courses by doing the extra building by doing the extra projects. Especially coming from my own experience, I did management information systems, we still had development, networking databases, a lot of that foundational coursework, in addition to business courses. Where I don’t have the background is in data structures and algorithms or some of that other foundational computer science thinking. But I added that later on, or working on that, either for preparing for an interview, or using it in the job as needed. And that’s still very much useful, it’s still very good to know how things work under the surface, it’s still good to know, to have that way of thinking. It’s still very, very beneficial to know those topics. Even if you don’t learn it beforehand, or learn it, officially in university, it’s still very, very helpful. And you’ll still probably make use of it sometime later on in your career. 

Ayan  

Given the fact that you also have courses of your own now on LinkedIn learning platform, do you see a lot of the people who are purchasing these courses have a professional college degree or like, what sort of ratio do you see? Or is it something that you don’t care about? And you’re like, “Okay, everyone’s welcome. I don’t care if you have a degree”. 

Adriane   

At least of the other instructors that I’ve seen, it runs the whole gamut. There are people who don’t have college degrees, there are people who have PhDs and are teaching. Again, I think it comes back to how passionate you are about it, how much experience you’ve had with the topic that you’re trying to teach.  

And honestly, there are a lot of courses to where there are people who are like, “I want to learn this subject and the best way to learn it is to teach it” so you can learn it but when you go to teach something, you find all those little bits and pieces of “okay, so I need to explain this topic to someone who doesn’t know it at all.” And that’s kind of where the deeper learning happens because you need to go that extra mile you need to go and see what are the pieces that are missing, that you know that you need to learn this topic well enough to be able to be comfortable to teach it. So college degrees, again, are not necessarily necessary, but they’re not a bad thing. You know, they don’t work against you. But it’s absolutely possible if you don’t have it. 

Ayan  

Coming to your current role as a Senior Developer Advocate, as you mentioned back, you were just giving talks in different conferences, because that’s what you loved about it. And MongoDB kind of picked it up from there, and you made a transition in developer advocacy, what would you say is something that motivated you to continue in this career journey, and what is that you really love about being a developer advocate from your day to day role? 

Adriane   

I was working as a senior developer, and working on a migration from Azure or on prem to full cloud as your platform. And at that time, I was learning a lot. A lot of companies, they sometimes offer stipends for employees to kind of put towards learning and development. So that could be going to a conference, going to some courses, etc. At that same time, I went to a conference, and I was watching somebody talk about a particular topic, specifically how to build pipelines and Azure DevOps. And I was thinking to myself, this person is really bad. They were not a great speaker, the talks that they had, or the content that they had, they’re basically just reading off of the slides, reading bullet points, and there was not a very good talk.  

It was at that moment that I said, “what does it actually take to become a speaker”? How did these people get up there because I felt I could do a better job than that person there. And so, I researched it and found that at a lot of these conferences, you actually get in by applying and you just create a talk proposal and tell them, “this is what I want to talk about”. This is what I think will be useful for the attendees of your conference. ​​I said, “you know what, I just felt like, let me just try to submit and see what happens.” And I did and at that time, I got accepted to seven conferences. So, I freaked out, because I’m like, oh, my gosh, you know, I’m a nobody, like, nobody knows me, why would they accept me. But that was kind of the first point that I said, that made me confident to think people actually want to hear the topics that I’m proposing, the way that I’ve written my proposal is good enough that it’s caught the eye of the committee and said, “this is good to put into our agenda.”  

That is what kind of kick started everything. And I’ll be honest, a big part of why I really love what I do is that I get to travel and I get to go to a lot of different developer communities and talk to all of them.In college, I actually was a pre-International Business major, because I thought that would give me a job like Anthony Bourdain, you know, you get your own show, you get to travel to a place, eat everywhere. And when I learned that wasn’t the case, I needed a plan B. It’s, it’s kind of funny how I’ve gotten into developer advocacy, because I am kind of fulfilling that in this role. What keeps me going in this role aside from the trouble and aside from getting to meet a bunch of different developers around the world, is that there’s a lot of different ways to teach something.

​​So for example, let’s say I had to create a demo or kind of give a workshop on something that I don’t know at all, it’s a new product, or it’s a new feature, or it’s something I may not be familiar with, there’s an opportunity to learn more about it to see what developers would find relevant about that product or find why it would make their experience a lot nicer, a lot more productive.

Finding all the pieces that are relevant to developers and bringing that to the forefront. So doing a lot of that and having a lot of different avenues to do that: conference talks, videos, blogs, slabs, a lot of which Cisco has in sandboxes there’s so many different ways to teach something. I think that’s one reason why I do like this role is that, if I ever get tired of conference talks, which I don’t think I ever will, there’s always another way to teach something and provide more resources to all kinds of learners. 

Ayan  

That’s the best part for developer advocacy. You get to meet a lot of people who are actually like-minded and there are a lot of collaboration opportunities that come up when you are hanging out with those people. When you are not traveling, how’s the usual day at work in Cisco looks like, like what are different things that you’re currently working on? And of course, when you’re not traveling, what are your day-to-day things that you do as a Senior Developer Advocate that Cisco. 

Adriane   

So, as with all developer advocates at different companies, that can mean a whole bunch of different things. For me personally, I’m actually leading one of our OKRs which very much aligns with how I actually first felt when I joined Cisco, because, you know, when I would tell people, I’m going to be a developer advocate for Cisco, they’re like, “okay…” like, you know, and that’s part of my job is to kind of help bring what’s relevant and show that Cisco does have a lot of API’s.  

And they do have a lot of open source tools that would be relevant to developers, you just don’t think of them because, you know, that’s part of what we’re trying to change is Cisco is relevant to developers.  

Ayan 

You mentioned the good part of developer advocacy. Now let’s talk about some challenges that you find in a day-to-day, you know, running your developer advocacy program, what are some challenges? And what are some aspects that you think are hard, and you’re still working on? And as a developer advocate, I understand that there are a lot of things that you’re doing at a time attending a conference. At the same time you’re maintaining documentation, you also have to update the community members about what’s happening. So, what are your challenges at Cisco being a senior developer advocate? 

Adriane   

I’ll say these are pretty common to most places. So, this isn’t just Cisco in general. But what I’ve found as a developer advocate is that you are kind of expected to do a lot, you are the community manager. You are the person that goes to conferences, you are the person that is maintaining documentation. You are the person that’s creating tutorials, and if you look at those four things I’ve mentioned, those are all jobs in and of themselves. Those are four separate things that four separate people could do. But there’s this expectation that developer advocates are expected to do it all.  

The risk of burnout and just not knowing what is a priority, because everything is a priority is very difficult. So, it’s very much helpful to kind of align, you know, with your manager and say, what is the top priority? What are the things that I should be working on, then even better, if you can focus on a couple of those things, the better. What I tried to do, because I know, as you know, in the experience that I’ve had is that you kind of just get asked to do a lot of different things is that if you can make a way or find a way to focus on a couple of those things, it’s easier for everybody involved, because it’s easier to manage your time, it’s also easier to focus on a few of the things that you actually really enjoy. If you like creating videos, for example, and you like creating content, that alone can take up a lot of your time. You have to prepare for that, you have to research, you have to write the scripts, you have to film the things, if you’re doing video, you have to edit it. That’s a lot of work. And that’s just one task. 

 So again, if you could focus on what you want to do, it would be a lot easier for everybody involved. Another thing that’s kind of difficult in developer advocacy, that if you are the person that’s on the road, travel is glamorous. But if you’re on the road for like three, four weeks, two months, you get tired of it, you get tired living out of a suitcase, you miss your own bed, the jet lag is real when you get back, trying to coordinate different meeting times trying to still keep up with your meetings and tasks while you are on the road. It’s very, very difficult. So yes, it is nice if you get to go maybe once or twice a month, but if you are on the road a lot more, it’s exhausting. 

Ayan  

I see that you’re also involved in mentoring in different communities. And as a developer advocate, mentorship becomes a part of the role, community members look up to you for things that you could help them with. But you have also been a mentor at code.org and glue code. So, tell me about what motivated you to mentor the next generation of developers and people in tech? Is it something coming from the love of teaching? How do you see mentorship opportunities? 

Adriane   

That is very special to me, because it started with when I started to share my own journey on Instagram. This is when admittedly, Instagram was a little bit bigger, maybe it’s still big, I don’t know. But when I was in that role, right before I actually moved into developer advocacy, I just started to share my day-to-day of what I did as a developer because I didn’t see a lot of people like myself. When you say developer, the first words that come into your mind are probably they’re a guy, they like to wear hoodies, and they’re all in black. And they’re in the dark, and they don’t like to talk to people. There’s this very, very single one-sided vision or image of what a developer is supposed to be. And it said, that’s not the case. I’m a developer, and I’m completely opposite,  I like to dress up. I’m a woman, I like to talk to people not so much. But I do like to talk to people, I’m not in a dark basement or whatever hiding from everybody. I wanted to change this image of what a developer meant. I started to do that in my own way by sharing my journey on Instagram. And that actually became a community in and of itself.

T​​here are a lot of other girls and women who had reached out to me and say, thank you so much for sharing your journey. I didn’t know there were other developers, or I didn’t know there were Filipina developers.  

I also like sharing that I’m Filipino descent. I’m Filipino-American, but I’m very proud of my heritage. And so, finding other Filipinos because in our culture, it’s very popular to kind of go into the medical route, either to become a nurse or a doctor. And I was not one of those people. I did not want to become a nurse. As a Filipino person, you’re kind of like, well, what do I do? Like that’s kind of the only path that is set forward for me. And so again, it’s like; Hey, here’s this other path that is a really fulfilling and satisfying path that you can be proud of if you don’t want to go into the medical field. This kind of naturally extended into sharing my story and kind of mentoring others at other schools in Las Vegas. Kind of just asked me; “hey, we see that you are there, you’re a part of the code.org list of mentors, would you mind coming into the classroom?” And just spending some time with these, first graders, fifth graders, third graders, high schoolers, I definitely would love to talk to them. It’s really interesting to go into those classrooms and say; “Hey, I’m a software developer, this is what I do. This is how you can get there. Here’s what you can do with code.” And it’s really, really fulfilling to see especially the little girls who are like, “you’re a software developer?” I’m like, “Yep, I’m a software developer, you can be one too.” Showing everybody that route, and it’s something that’s really fun, and can offer a very fulfilling career path. I think that’s why I like doing it and continue to mentor as much as I can. 

Ayan  

Giving back to the community and not just in terms of development, I would say I personally feel that every developer should go out and also try speaking in different conferences, maybe local meetup groups. You just mentioned that you sent out the call for proposal and you got selected by seven different conferences. So, tell us about that. And if someone is a developer who is working on some new technology, some new stack, andthey just want to, take it forward and speak about it at a conference or a local meetup group, and they are a bit shy about that? How would you say that they go about it, because you’re also coming from the same experience? Because you’ve seen someone giving a talk and you say, oh, I could do better than that. What are your views and advice for the people, first of all, why should they do it and how should they do it? 

Adriane   

That it’s a great question. Yes. If you want to do it, absolutely do it. The biggest question I get is I’m kind of scared or I don’t know if I can do it. Or another thing I hear is, oh, “this topic has been done so many times, like, why would I want to give a talk about that?” And what I’ll answer is, ​​

everybody may do the same topic, but they don’t say it or explain it in a way that you will, because your voice is unique.  

If you take a look at all the conference talks that you see, or Meetup group topics, you will find what’s common among them. There are a lot of JavaScript topics, a lot of the same JavaScript topics, a lot of the same React topics, there are a lot of topics that are done over and over and over again. But why do you still see them and it’s because different people have a different way of explaining it, and may have a better way or novel way to explain it. They will never go out of style, especially if they are hot topics or topics that are here to stay in the tech industry. So, if you think that is something that you are working on, if it’s new to you, that’s still a very valid perspective that should be shared. There are a lot of other people who can relate to you. Don’t let that be something that stops you from sharing in order to get started.  

There are two approaches to this. There’s like the Big Bang thing, which is what I did. So, I just went straight to let me just apply to all the conferences that I think would be relevant and where I have something to share and see what happens. And I got accepted to seven, and you kind of just go in there and you do it. ​​

The other way, if you want to do it a little bit more methodically and build up to it is, meetups are a super great place to kind of get started because it’s a smaller crowd, local meetups are usually easier to get to.

And people who run these local meetups are always looking for people to speak, they have a community already built, usually much nicer in terms of being more flexible in what you want to talk about. And it’s the local community. Once you do that once or twice, you get more comfortable with the community, you get comfortable with the audience, you get comfortable with what it’s like speaking to other people. And so maybe you work your way up. Maybe apply to a conference that’s in your state and then slowly but surely as your audience grows, I think that’s one way people find the confidence to kind of get all the way to the conference level where they’re speaking in front of 1000s people. So that’s another way to do it. 

Ayan  

And I would add that even the most experienced speakers from the developer community are still sometimes being rejected from these conferences, and that’s totally fine. You don’t have to be heartbroken about that. There’s always a next conference or a next meetup, where your talk would be the perfect fit, and you just have to keep doing it.  

Ayan  

Do you have sort of mantra when it comes to community and building community or scaling community or, you know what’s your take on that because I feel that being a developer advocate, empathy is a really strong suite that every developer advocate should have, they should understand the needs of the community and be able to advocate that within the company. And this is what we need to prioritize.  

Adriane   

That’s a great question. I think, personally, I’ve kind of focused, as most people would, with the communities that they align with, and the communities that they would like to grow into or be a part of. So, I’ll explain that by saying, when I mentioned how a lot of other Filipina girls and women would contact me and say, “Oh, you’re a developer”, you know, they would ask me questions similar to how you are doing right now, like, how did you get into developer advocacy? What is being a software developer like? How do I prepare for an interview? How do I write a CFP or Chuck proposal? How do you not get nervous when you go up and talk all of these different questions? They come to me, partly because, my face is out there. You know, I’ve spoken at conferences, I write content for companies, I have a book, my name is out there. So, people come to me. But in the beginning, I purposely intentionally tried to find other Filipina software developers to grow that community. I know that we’re out there, I know that we’re not all in the medical field.  

It’s part of showing that there is this community that actually exists and wants to be part of the larger tech community as a whole. And so that focus has led me to find other Filipina speakers who are in tech who are around the world. And that’s been a really great part of focusing on this community. There’s Jonah in Sweden, who is also a speaker who focuses on Azure topics. There’s Marylog in Denmark, and I’ve gotten the chance to meet Marylog but not Jonah yet- I hope to meet her sometime this year. And even though we haven’t met, we still have a friendship that goes across the internet. And we support each other, if we have a conference that’s happening, and they’re looking for more speakers, I reach out to them and say, “Hey, here’s a great opportunity for you to go speak at this place, because you have the expertise, and you probably would enjoy speaking here.” Those kinds of relationships,and then connecting people to the relevant places, I think, is a really big part of that community building. it’s one thing to meet it and grow the network for yourself, it’s another to kind of say, “Hey, you are a perfect fit for this particular thing.” And then that community kind of naturally grows because you’re connecting people.

​​I think if there’s any mantra of mine, when it comes to community, it’s, I kind of meet the people myself first, and then I see if there’s a fit for them.

And then I try to connect relevant people together to grow that network even larger, where those connections may not have ever been made. 

Ayan  

When it comes to communicating ideas, developer advocates, usually write blogs or make videos or, you know, it could be like, I’m just going to give a talk out there in a conference about this topic and use that conference recording to put it out there in my community. So, what are your thoughts on this? How do you decide on this? Baes on the topic, like this topic is best fit for a blog. Or this topic is better explained when I share my screen, so I’m going to make a video about it. So how do you go about this? 

Adriane   

I think it depends. And that’s the famous answer. For me, I think it comes from number one, what does the community want? So that could mean what topics are most relevant? What topics are they searching for? What do they want to learn, because you may be really interested in some super niche topic, but nobody wants to learn about it for you, great. But as a developer advocate, you want to serve your community you want to serve the developers that you are creating this content for. And so what’s number one is what does your community want? What do they look for?  

Then once you narrow down those topics, then it goes down to how do they like consuming it? So, you may have a community that loves blogs, they like reading, they like step-by-step tutorials. And then you may find there’s another subset of that community that actually prefers videos. So, this is where creativity comes in. Because usually when you create this kind of content, you probably do both to cover both of those communities. And sometimes the topic lends itself well to having both. So, you may have a video that has the screen capture and you’re doing a voiceover of, here’s how you do something. But then you have an accompanying blog that has code snippets that’s easy to copy and paste so that they can work alongside the video. So, it depends on the topic. Sometimes if it’s a bit more generic or just an overview, then yeah, maybe a video is fine, that will be enough. Sometimes you just do a blog. But in most cases, most of the topics and content that you create are going to be in all of the different forms, so that it serves the majority of your community and the way that they want you to consume. 

Ayan  

I’m really excited about the things that we are going to be doing together. And that includes some blocks coming up for the Developer Nation Community. Would you also like to talk about this so that our community members know what they could expect in future weeks or months? 

Adriane   

This is something I’m super excited about, we have an open-source tool called API insights. And it’s a way to help developers pretty much create better API’s. And what I mean by that is, it’s a partly static analysis tool. But it’s also a tool that helps you look into your API’s. And it essentially calculates a score. So, if you like games, and you like gamifying things, this is like the perfect thing for you. So, as you’re writing your API, we have an engine that statically analyzes your API endpoints, and it checks all of the different versions of your API against, say, an open API spec, and it calculates a score, how well are you doing against these specifications, and that concept is wrapped into this tool. Tthe next blog that I hope to write for developer nation is an introduction to how to get started with that tool, specifically how to install it on VS code, because we have a VS code extension for it and to do just a couple run throughs of how you would use this tool in your developer workflow, and then hopefully, a follow up blog on how to integrate that into your CI/CD pipeline with GitHub actions. 

Ayan  

We are coming to the end of this podcast so I’m just going to ask you a couple of last questions. The first one being what are you most excited about in today’s tech world? What excites you, when you see technology happening here. I know, CES is happening in your city at the moment. And then we will have  Mobile World Congress next month. So, a lot of amazing things are to come. But what excites you the most in the tech industry at this present moment? 

Adriane   

So, one thing that I’ve been following closely, I don’t think it’s there. But I think we’re starting on is the prospect of being able to own our own data. And what I mean by that is, I think it’s pretty understood at this point that a lot of different companies have a lot of data on us, they know us very, very well from what we search online, to how we shop, to what devices we use. And a lot of people don’t necessarily understand that there’s this really large profile about us that unwillingly most of the time they have collected about us. So there are movements that come to light and say; “Hey, we should take charge of our own data of our own profiles that have been built up.” And are very excited at the prospect of potentially owning our data. And you know, if we actually wanted to sell that data to the companies ourselves, why not make a buck off of our own data, right?​​

So, the people who want to be super private can have autonomy over their data, and then the people who want to make use of that data can.

So, it’s always been talked about, and it’s something that always interested me. But I think now it’s becoming closer to reality, because of all of the protections that we have in place. And because a lot of it is being brought to light. So that’s what I’m excited about 

Ayan  

100%, I wouldn’t mind monetizing moisture data in my room any day. Why not? All right, so I have the last question for you. Because this podcast is mainly focused on inspiring people from the career trajectory of our guests. For someone who is currently doing some sort of development and they want to make a transition to Developer Advocacy, what sort of advice would you give them, where can they start? And what are the different places they can hang out, what are the different skills that they should learn? Do they need to be a really good speaker, and really good writer ? 

Adriane   

The developer advocacy is a very exciting thing to be thinking about as a developer. What I would say to those who are considering it is if you find yourself sharing in a particular way about what you’re doing, hone in on that.  

So, for me, the first thing that I wanted to do was share via speaking because that’s something that I was used to and wanted to learn more about. Was I a great speaker before that? No. I, again, went into it headfirst and found out that, hey, I actually don’t mind talking in front of 3000 people. I still get nervous beforehand, but I enjoyed doing it. It’s something I really like to do. What I would say is, for those who are thinking about a career in developer advocacy, or want to switch, find what it is that you’d like to do. If you find yourself creating videos in your off time, that’s what you’d like to do, you’d like to edit videos, you’d like to teach in a way that you screen capture recorded, write the scripts and write those out, maybe you have a way in by creating that type of content. If you’d like to write blogs, really focus on making your writing better, make it more concise, learn all of the different tools, like become more well versed in Markdown or some other writing tool that makes it easy for you to publish on a better cadence, start a newsletter to kind of get into that zone of producing something every week or every two weeks. If you like talking to people, go to your local meetups, Ayanone yourself or organize one yourself, or see if you can help volunteer and be a part of those local meetups because then you get to see what it take to run a meetup? How do you organize it? What does it take to get people in seats? How do you market your event, there are all these different pieces that you don’t necessarily learn until you’ve done the thing. ​​

And so that’s my advice, to find what it is that you’re interested in and find what makes you happy. And then do those kinds of additional things to help you learn what it means to do it, like going to the local events, or continue to write or continue to make videos and then share that with the outer community.

And then you’ll find that there are a lot of people who are wanting to hire you for developer advocacy for that particular thing that you’re doing, and sharing. 

Ayan  

Amazing. Well, thank you so much, Adriane for your time. I really had a fun time discussing everything with you. And I’m sure we will be getting you back in pretty soon for another episode. For now I’m looking forward to all the blogs that you will be sending our way for our community. So, thank you very much again for your time. I really had a fun time and we are  probably going to see you again. Thank you so much. 

Adriane   

I had a great time too. Thanks. 

Categories
Analysis Community

Coding the Future: How Developers Embrace and Adopt Emerging Technologies

As the popularity of a technology ebbs and flows, so does its impact, and when it comes to software development practices, few recent technologies have exerted as profound an influence as DevOps. This technology has become truly mainstream, seeing widespread adoption across software sectors, industries, and roles. We are delighted to say that, for these reasons, DevOps has matured out of our emerging technology tracker and instead has been replaced with several new and exciting technologies that have the potential to reshape the world. Here, we’ll use developers’ engagement with and adoption of these technologies to help us understand just how this might come to pass.

We have tracked developers’ engagement with and adoption of different technologies over six surveys, spanning three years, endingQ1 2021. To measure engagement and adoption, we asked developers if they are working on, learning about, interested in, or not interested in different emerging technologies, whilst adding to the list as new innovations appear. We classified each technology according to whether its engagement rate is above or below the median-high/low engagement-and whether its adoption rate is above or below the median-high/low adoption. 

Robotics, mini apps and computer vision are taking the lead as emerging technologies developers are most engaged with

After graduating DevOps from our emerging technology tracker, robotics, mini apps – apps embedded within another app – and computer vision head the table for those emerging technologies with which developers are most engaged. Around half of developers say they are working on, learning about, or interested in each of these technologies, and, whilst mini apps are most widely adopted by professional developers, hobbyists and students are most interested in robotics. However, of the developers engaged with mini apps, nearly a quarter are currently working on the technology. For computer vision, this drops to 15%, and for robotics, just 10%. Despite engaging developers in similar ways, it’s clear that the practical applications of mini apps are widely recognised by developers-in fact adoption increased by four percentage points in the last twelve months, one of the largest increases we saw.

Nearly 30% of actively engaged developers are learning about cryptocurrencies

Almost three in ten engaged developers are learning about cryptocurrencies, the most of any technology – though other blockchain applications are close behind on 26%. The academic interest in these technologies has yet to translate directly into adoption-only 14% and 12% of engaged developers are actively working on projects using these technologies. More than 40% of them are professionally involved in web apps / Software as aService (SaaS), and a third are involved in mobile development as professionals. This said, adoption did increase for both cryptocurrencies (+5 percentage points), and other blockchain applications (+4 percentage points) in the last twelve months-developers are continuing to find practical applications for these technologies. With giants such as Maersk incorporating blockchain technology into their logistics management systems in the last few years, more widespread adoption is inevitable.

Quantum computing and self-driving cars still lag in adoption

Quantum computing and self-driving cars continue to languish near the bottom in terms of adoption, but continue to spark some developers’ imaginations – more than two in five developers are engaged with these technologies. However, of these developers, fewer than one in ten are actually working on each of these technologies, and whilst engagement with these technologies dropped over the last twelve months, adoption increased for both – though more for quantum computing (4 percentage points) than self-driving cars (2 percentage points). There is a similar story with brain / body computer interfaces, which is a new technology that we added in the most recent survey-many developers are engaged, but, unsurprisingly, given its bleeding-edge status, very few are actively working on the technology.

We also recently added hearables, DNA computing / storage, and haptic feedback to our list of emerging technologies. Engagement is low with these technologies; on a level with fog/edge computing-between a quarter and a third of developers are engaged. We see that around one in ten engaged developers are actively working on these very nascent technologies, and two in ten are learning about them. Though the engaged audience for these technologies is small, there is a core of developers contributing to their continued progress.

Each of the emerging technologies we have covered encounters different barriers on its path to widespread adoption. For many, the barriers are technological-the advances needed to bring quantum or DNA computing to the mainstream are many years away, but there are also social, cultural, and even legislative barriers which will impede progress. Though important, developers are only part of the puzzle.

Categories
Community Tips

Infographic: Who is behind open-source software?

In our 18th survey wave, we’ve asked developers whether they contribute to open-source software, and if so, why? In this post, we’ll explore who the contributors to open-source software are, their reasons for contributing, and finally what open-source support they expect from companies.

Open-source contributors tend to be younger than non-contributors.

More than a third (33%) of developers who contribute to open-source software are less than 24 years old as compared to 26% of non-contributors. This is not to say that they are inexperienced programmers; 41% of open-source contributors have 1 to 5 years of experience, 4 percentage points higher than non-contributors.

Contrary to what one might think, open-source contributors are not necessarily professionals. In fact, they are equally likely to be amateurs than non-contributors. You don’t have to be working professionally in the software industry to be involved and contribute to open-source software development.

Open-source software

Open-source contributors are more likely to be involved in multiple development areas than non-contributors. However, open-source contributors are significantly more likely to be involved in emerging sectors such as machine learning/AI and AR/VR, where innovations are mostly driven by open-source tools.

Finally, as you’d expect, developers’ likelihood of contributing to open-source software is also reflected in their activity on the most popular open-source hosting site, Github. The correlation is clear. Two-thirds of developers who don’t contribute (67%) have no personal public repositories on Github, whereas close to half of the contributors (48%) have two or more public repositories. We observe a somewhat similar relationship with Stack Overflow. Non-contributors are significantly more likely to not use the Q&A site at all or visit the site but not have an account. On the other hand, open-source contributors are twice as likely as developers who don’t contribute to have earned at least one badge (30% vs 15%). Working on open-source projects encourages developers to actively engage with their peers on Q&A sites. We’ve seen which developers contribute to open-source software projects. Let’s now dive into the reasons for contributing.

Why contribute to open-source software

Developers are most motivated to contribute to open-source projects to improve coding skills (29%) and a belief in the benefits of open-source (26%). What’s more, 22% of developers contribute to open-source software because it’s fun or to solve an issue with an existing open-source software project such as fixing a bug or creating a new feature.

By contrast, financial compensation is the least important motivation. Only 3% of developers are getting paid for their work on open-source projects. As it turns out, developers are more likely to get involved in open-source projects to build their reputation (14%) or to network (11%) rather than for direct financial gain. Furthermore, developers who get paid to contribute are almost 20 percentage points less likely to think it’s fun than those who contribute for other reasons. They are also significantly less likely to believe in open-source as a source of freedom, as an ideological imperative. 

Typically developers don’t contribute to open-source for a single reason but are motivated by multiple factors. For example, half of the developers who contribute to open-source for improving their coding skills also think it’s fun. 56% of contributors who want to network also feel like it makes them belong somewhere.

What developers expect from companies

In our Q4 2019 Developer Economics survey, we also asked developers what open-source support they expect from companies. Thirty-three percent of developers not contributing to open-source don’t expect anything from companies, as compared to 15% among open-source contributors. That said, two-thirds of non-contributors still think that companies should be involved and provide support to the open-source software movement; they realise how important open-source is and believe that companies should be a part of it.

On the other hand, 44% of open-source contributors expect companies to support and contribute to open-source communities. This increases to 55% for developers who contribute to solve an issue. Many contributors (44%) expect full documentation on how to use open-source software on companies’ products or services. This is especially important to developers who get paid for their work (53%).

Interestingly, open-source developers do not necessarily expect companies to build products and services upon open-source software (39%). This is the least important vendor expectation from developers in terms of support for open-source software.

Open-source software contributors are a diverse group of people. Their motivations to contribute range from learning, having fun, solving issues to building relationships and reputations. In summary, developers have plenty of reasons to contribute to open-source, and they expect companies to support them along the way. 

If you are involved in open-source and want to share your views, visit our latest survey and help shape the trends.

Categories
Community Languages News and Resources Platforms Tools

Current development trends in software engineering

Every year we conduct two global, independent developer surveys engaging more than 30,000 developers. We track development trends across platforms, revenues, apps, tools, languages etc. The 18th Developer Economics survey ran from November 2019 to February 2020 with more than 17,000 developers and tech-makers participating, allowing us to analyze and understand development trends on major areas such as mobile, cloud, desktop, IoT, web, augmented and virtual reality, machine learning and games. 

It’s no secret that we are data-enthusiasts. Data is in our DNA.

After each survey wave, we transform these data into graphs and insights and offer part of them as resources to our developer community. Our methodology is founded on 9 essential and non-negotiable qualities:  magnitude, impartiality, inclusivity, consistency, substantive, engagement, diligence, confidence and breadth. See more on how our methodology allows us to understand and profile developers.

Our goal is not only to help the world understand developers but also to add value to all the developers out there, by offering them the necessary insights to benchmark themselves and make smarter business decisions based on current development trends.

So let’s have a look at what our developers are saying, shall we?

Starting from some basic insights, it is important to know in which age group our respondents belong: 35% of developers worldwide are between 25 and 34 years old. The second largest demographic – almost 28%- is the young developers, aged 18 to 24 years old. 

What age group are you in?

Development trends

Just over half of our respondents reported having less than 5 years of coding experience. As our research covers both professionals and amateurs such as hobbyists and students, the experience mix makes perfect sense and is representative of the coding skills of the global developer population. We find that the young and relatively inexperienced are the first to jump into emerging sectors drawn by the hype, and they play a key role in their evolution.

How many years have you been working on software projects?

Development trends

Focusing on programming language preferences of mobile and backend developers, we find that Java is the third option for backend developers, while the most popular choice of mobile developers. The first choice of backend developers is instead Javascript with over half using it for cloud development. 

Which programming languages do you use to write code that runs on the device in your mobile apps?

development trends

Which programming languages do you use to write code that runs on the server?

development trends

When it comes to front-end frameworks or libraries for web applications most programmers use jQuery (49.7%) and Bootstrap (48%). Other frameworks our respondents stated they’re using are React (42.9%), Vue (28%) and Angular (2+) (25.2%). 

What about trends in augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR)? Almost half of the developers working on AR/VR use C#. Moreover, as is typical of a still-emerging sector, almost 60% of respondents said they are hobbyists in this field.
Last but not least game development. Developers mostly prefer to create adventure and action game apps with 44% of respondents choosing each of these. 36% create Arcade games while almost 23% choose Role Playing or Strategy games.

Which categories do your games fit in?

development trends

For more insights from our latest survey, you can check out the Developer Economics graphs dashboard. It’s also a great opportunity to benchmark yourself against the global average. 
Enjoy!

Looking for a more thorough report analysing the developer population and trends? Download our next State of the Developers Nation report 18th Edition. You will find it here.

Categories
Community

Developer Economics Survey Q2 2019 Prize Winners!

We’re excited to announce the full list of our prize winners for Developer Economics survey Q2 2019. ?

Congratulations to all the winners! If you’d like to join our developer community and win prizes like these, find out more here.

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 community@developereconomics.com.

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 time frame mentioned in the respective e-mail they received, then runner-ups will be asked to claim them instead.

via GIPHY
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Exclusive Community Prize Draw for members with 801+ points – Prizes: Microsoft Surface Pro 6 and OnePlus 6T.

Winner Prize
t**********@l***.c**, Croatia Microsoft Surface Pro 6
n********@y****.c*.i*, UAE OnePlus 6T

Exclusive Community Prize Draw for members with 801+ points – Prizes: branded hoodies, hats, stickers, socks, online courses and vouchers.

Winner Prize
v********@o******.c**, India Developer Economics stickers & socks
n***.b*****@g****.c**, Finland Developer Economics stickers & socks
c**************@y****.f*, Algeria Developer Economics stickers & socks
m***********@c*******.i*, Canada Developer Economics stickers & socks
j********@g****.c**, South Africa Developer Economics stickers & socks
k*********@o******.c**, Trinidad & Tobago Developer Economics stickers & hoodie
a********@g****.c**, India Developer Economics stickers & hoodie
n*******@g****.c**, Iran Developer Economics stickers & hoodie
m***********@g****.c**, Egypt Developer Economics stickers & hoodie
p****.a*****@g****.c**, Italy Developer Economics stickers & hoodie
j********@g****.c**, United States Developer Economics stickers & hat
m*****@c******.c**, Malaysia Developer Economics stickers & hat
m*********@h******.c**, Greece Developer Economics stickers & hat
d*********@g****.c**, Canada Developer Economics stickers & hat
c****@h******.c**, United States Developer Economics stickers & hat
n*****@g****.c**, Canada $50 Udemy course or Amazon voucher
a********@l***.c**, India $50 Udemy course or Amazon voucher
t*******.h******@g**.d*, Germany $50 Udemy course or Amazon voucher
v********@t*****.c**.m*, Mexico $50 Udemy course or Amazon voucher
r******@g****.c**, Canada $50 Udemy course or Amazon voucher

Exclusive Community Prize Draw for members with 501+ points – Prizes: branded hoodies, hats, stickers, socks, online course and gear.

Winner Prize
m******@g****.c**, Germany Developer Economics stickers & socks
d****@f***********.c**, Australia Developer Economics stickers & socks
j*******.h*****@h******.c**, Austria Developer Economics stickers & socks
d********@g****.c**, United Kingdom Developer Economics stickers & socks
a******.p*********@g****.c**, Spain Developer Economics stickers & socks
a****.s**********@g****.c**, United States Developer Economics stickers & socks
d************@h******.i*, Italy Developer Economics stickers & socks
p****@p**********.n***, Australia Developer Economics stickers & socks
v*******@g****.c**, Latvia Developer Economics stickers & socks
f******@o******.c**, Malaysia Developer Economics stickers & socks
b*******@g****.c**, El Salvador Developer Economics stickers & socks
k**************@g****.c**, India Developer Economics stickers & socks
d******.m****@g****.c**, Canada Developer Economics stickers & hoodie
b********.o*****@g****.c**, Mexico Developer Economics stickers & hoodie
m********@g****.c**, India Developer Economics stickers & hoodie
m********@g****.c**, Canada Developer Economics stickers & hoodie
l***********@g****.c**, Canada Developer Economics stickers & hoodie
f***********@l***.c**, Canada $50 Udemy course or Amazon voucher
j******@g****.c**, United Kingdom $50 Udemy course or Amazon voucher
r*******.p*******@o******.i*, Italy $50 Udemy course or Amazon voucher

Exclusive Community Prize Draw for members with 301+ points – Prizes: branded hoodies, stickers, socks.

Winner Prize
l******@g****.c**, Argentina Developer Economics stickers & socks
a******@g****.c**, France Developer Economics stickers & socks
m*****.t*********@g****.c**, Lithuania Developer Economics stickers & socks
t*******@g****.c**, United States Developer Economics stickers & socks
b****.e****.d**@g****.c**, Japan Developer Economics stickers & socks
x*******@n****.c**, Korea, South Developer Economics stickers & socks
e*******@y****.i*, Italy Developer Economics stickers & socks
b******@g****.c**, Russia Developer Economics stickers & hoodie
d*******@g****.c**, United States Developer Economics stickers & hoodie
k***.m*****.d*****@g****.c**, Hungary Developer Economics stickers & hoodie

General draw prize winners

Winner Prize
a*********@g****.c**, Russia Microsoft Surface Pro 6
g*************@g****.c**, India Oculus Rift S
j**************@y****.c**, United States AWS Deep Racer
d*@d***********.c**, Dominican Republic Samsung HMD Odyssey
d****@a******.c**, Turkey Samsung Chromebook 3
i**************@g****.c**, United States Samsung Chromebook 3
h****.z******.3*@g****.c**, Brunei Choice of JetBrains IDE
b**************@g****.c**, Poland 6 months SitePoint Premium Subscription
a*****.j******@g****.c**, India 6 months SitePoint Premium Subscription
a************@g****.c**, India 6 months SitePoint Premium Subscription
m********@g****.c**, Moldova 6 months SitePoint Premium Subscription
d*********@o******.c**, Finland 6 months SitePoint Premium Subscription
j*******.j****@h******.c**, United States Apple AirPods
a*****.a*.2*.k**@g****.c**, India 3d printer
o******************@g****.c**, Nigeria 3d printer
m.q*********.8*@g****.c**, Egypt Tello
2******@g****.c**, Russia Amazon Echo
a*************@g****.c**, Spain Amazon Echo
L****.P******@g****.c**, United States Amazon Echo
a**.g******@g****.c**, India $30 Easyspace gift voucher
d**************@g****.c**, India $30 Easyspace gift voucher
e*******@g****.c**, Russia $25 Virtual Visa Card
N*******@y****.c**, South Africa $25 Virtual Visa Card
o********@t*****.c*.z*, South Africa $25 Virtual Visa Card
a*************@g****.c**, Vietnam $25 Virtual Visa Card
k*****.2******@g****.c**, India $25 Virtual Visa Card
j********@h******.c**, Portugal $25 Virtual Visa Card
a*@a**********.c**, Spain $25 Virtual Visa Card
e****@c****.c*.u*, United Kingdom $25 Virtual Visa Card
h****.t*****@g****.c**, Vietnam $25 Virtual Visa Card
n***.a****.m****@g****.c**, Romania $25 Virtual Visa Card
n******@g****.c**, India $15 Dev.to voucher
m*******@g****.c**, Vietnam $15 Dev.to voucher
j.v*******@m*.c**, United Kingdom $15 Dev.to voucher
h******@g****.c**, France $15 Dev.to voucher
o**********@g****.c**, Kenya $15 Dev.to voucher
a********@g****.c**, United States $15 Dev.to voucher
a****@t***.c**, Canada $15 Dev.to voucher
e****.b******.s**@g****.c**, United Kingdom $15 Dev.to voucher
b**@l***********.c**, Finland $15 Dev.to voucher
j****@o********.c*.z*, South Africa $15 Dev.to voucher
d********@g****.c**, Czech Republic $15 Dev.to voucher
a********@g****.c**, Ukraine $15 Dev.to voucher
H***********@g****.c**, Nigeria $15 Dev.to voucher
n****************@g****.c**, India Developer Economics stickers
d********@g****.c**, United States Developer Economics stickers
d*.a*******@g****.c**, Russia Developer Economics stickers
c******@d***.a*, France Developer Economics stickers
a**********@g****.c**, Moldova Developer Economics stickers
d******.g****@g****.c**, Italy Developer Economics stickers
b************@g****.c**, Nigeria Developer Economics stickers
j***************@c*****.c**, United States Developer Economics stickers
n******@w*.p*, Poland Developer Economics stickers
i**.p******@v*****.n**, United Kingdom Developer Economics stickers
a**************@g****.c**, India Developer Economics stickers
e*****.h@g****.c**, France Developer Economics stickers
h************@g****.c**, Nigeria Developer Economics stickers
h************@g****.c**, Ghana Developer Economics stickers
j**********@g****.c**, Spain Developer Economics stickers
b*******@g****.c**, Uganda Developer Economics stickers
m*********@g****.c**, Portugal Developer Economics stickers
e***.c*****.9*@g****.c**, Russia Developer Economics stickers
h***************@g****.c**, United States Developer Economics stickers
m********@y****.c**, Philippines Developer Economics stickers
a***@v*****.c**, United Kingdom Developer Economics stickers
i**.x***.y**@g****.c**, United States Developer Economics stickers
k**********@g****.c**, United Kingdom Developer Economics stickers
k*****************@g****.c**, India Developer Economics stickers
j**@w*********.c**, Canada Developer Economics stickers
b***.g********@c***.o**.i*, India Developer Economics stickers
d************@h******.i*, Italy Developer Economics stickers
f*******.z*******@g****.c**, Uruguay Developer Economics stickers
m*********@g****.c**, India Developer Economics stickers
i*****@g****.c**, India Developer Economics stickers
e*******@b*******.e**, United States Developer Economics powerbanks
g******.d******@g****.c**, Greece Developer Economics powerbanks
c*****.c******@g****.c**, Mexico Developer Economics powerbanks
l*********@h******.c*.u*, South Africa Developer Economics powerbanks
a*********@g****.c**, Russia Developer Economics powerbanks
k****************@g****.c**, Russia Developer Economics powerbanks
m*****@n********.n**, Italy Developer Economics powerbanks
k********@k********.c**, Spain Developer Economics powerbanks
a*****@r********.c**.b*, Brazil Developer Economics powerbanks
c*************@g****.c**, Vietnam Developer Economics powerbanks
f*.p********@g****.c**, Italy Developer Economics powerbanks
k************@g****.c**, Vietnam Developer Economics powerbanks
g********@y****.c**, Israel Developer Economics powerbanks
d******@m***.r*, Russia Developer Economics powerbanks
c*******.m******@g****.c**, Nigeria Developer Economics powerbanks
e***.b.k*****@h******.c**, Turkey Developer Economics powerbanks
i***@p************.c**, Czech Republic Developer Economics powerbanks
a********.a********@g****.c**, India Developer Economics powerbanks
m********@h******.c**, Turkey Developer Economics powerbanks
l************@g****.c**, Vietnam Developer Economics powerbanks

Extra Prize Winners (respondents could enter extra draws depending on the areas of interest they participated in).

s***.m*****@d**************.c**, United States $40 Easyspace gift voucher
o********@y****.c**, India Amazon Echo
d*******@g****.c**, Argentina Developer Economics socks
1********@g****.c**, Ukraine Echo Dot
k********@g****.c**, Greece $40 Redbubble voucher
f********@m**.n*.j*, Japan WeMo Mini Smart Plug
s**************@g****.c**, Greece ModernistLook MAX II backpack
b***.b****.c****@g****.c**, United States JBL GO 2 Bluetooth speaker
v******@g****.c**, Vietnam Developer Economics socks
e***************@g****.c**, Russia Echo Dot
m*****.f*******@o******.c**, Austria Developer Economics socks
o************@g****.c**, United States Whoosh! Screen Cleaner
v**********@g****.c**, India Amazon Echo
p******@g****.c**, India Raspberry Pi 3 Model A+
M*****.S****@w**.d*, Germany Developer Economics socks
d***@d*********.n**, United States Kasa Smart Wi-Fi Power Strip
a*******@y*****.r*, Russia $30 ThinkGeek gift card
b**@n*******.i*, United States Developer Economics socks
c**********@g****.c**, Russia Google Home Hub Smart Display
p************@g****.c**, India WITTI Design BEDDI Glow
k*******@g****.c**, India $20 Udemy voucher
n*****@g****.c**, Russia Clean Code by Bob Martin
p*******.c****@g****.c**, India JBL GO 2 Portable Speaker
s********@g****.c**, South Africa Developer Economics socks

 

Categories
Community

Another Successful Developer Economics Survey came to an end!

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!