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A Deep Dive into Accessibility: Designing and Developing for All Users

Website accessibility refers to the practice of making web content and features usable for all people, including those with disabilities. It involves designing websites and applications in a way that removes barriers that might prevent interaction or access by people with various impairments. 

Web accessibility includes ensuring compatibility with assistive technologies like screen readers, providing alternative text for images, and ensuring navigability and readability for users with different abilities. The goal is to enable equal access and opportunity for individuals regardless of their physical or cognitive capabilities.

It is important to consider accessibility in all aspects of design and development to ensure that all users have equal access to information and functionality.

To understand digital accessibility, here’s a brief summary of different disabilities and their impact on accessing digital content:

  1. Visual Disabilities: Individuals who are blind or have low vision may struggle with non-textual digital content, complex layouts, and navigation that is not screen-reader friendly​​​​.
  2. Auditory Disabilities: Those who are deaf or hard of hearing face challenges with audio content lacking captions or transcripts and voice-only web interactions​​​​.
  3. Cognitive, Learning, and Neurological Disabilities: This category includes ADHD, autism, and learning disabilities, where users may need simplified content, structured navigation, and visual aids​​​​.
  4. Physical Disabilities: People with motor disabilities often require keyboard-friendly navigation, larger clickable areas, and additional time for task completion​​​​.

Designing for accessibility involves creating digital content that is easy to perceive, understand, and navigate for all users. Some key design considerations include:

  • Using alt text for images to provide descriptions for users with visual impairments.
  • Ensuring proper color contrast for individuals with color blindness.
  • Using headers and lists to make content easier to navigate for screen reader users.
  • Making sure forms are accessible by using labels and clear instructions.

Developing for accessibility involves using proper coding techniques to ensure that all users can access and interact with digital content. This includes:

  • Using semantic HTML to structure and label content correctly.
  • Using ARIA attributes to provide additional information for assistive technologies.
  • Testing with assistive technologies to ensure that the content is accessible.

It is essential to avoid common mistakes in accessibility design and development, such as not providing alternative text for images or using images instead of text for important information. It is also crucial to regularly test for accessibility to ensure that the content remains accessible.

There are various tools and resources available to help with designing and developing for accessibility, such as screen readers, color contrast checkers, and accessibility auditing tools. These resources can aid in testing for accessibility and identifying areas for improvement. By considering accessibility in design and development, we can create a more inclusive and accessible digital world for all users.

What is Accessibility and Why is it Important?

Ensuring that everything is useable by everyone, including individuals with disabilities, is the definition of accessibility in design. It’s crucial because it provides equal access and opportunities for everybody. Businesses that prioritize this attract a wider audience and demonstrate their concern for all individuals.

Understanding Different Types of Disabilities

It’s critical to include everyone while designing and constructing, especially those with disabilities. Understanding the many types of disabilities that people experience is important. We primarily concentrate on four types: those that impair a person’s capacity for movement, hearing, vision, or thought and comprehension. We can ensure that what we develop benefits everyone by learning more about these.

1. Visual Disabilities

  • Provide text alternatives for non-text content, such as images and graphs, to accommodate individuals with visual disabilities.
  • Ensure proper color contrast between text and background to improve readability for all users.
  • Organize content clearly using headings and lists to facilitate navigation and improve accessibility.
  • Design forms that are easily accessible, allowing for seamless completion and submission.
  • Consider consulting accessibility guidelines, such as WCAG 2.1, to ensure comprehensive coverage for individuals with disabilities.

2. Hearing Disabilities

  • Provide captions and transcripts for videos and audio content to ensure access to information for individuals with hearing disabilities.
  • Use visual alerts and vibrations to convey information for individuals with hearing impairments.
  • Ensure that important audio information is also presented visually, such as in subtitles or on-screen text.

3. Motor Disabilities

  • Assess specific needs: Identify the user’s motor abilities, including any disabilities, to determine the best interaction methods.
  • Provide alternative inputs: Offer options such as voice commands, keyboard shortcuts, or adaptive switches to accommodate users with motor disabilities.
  • Optimize control elements: Use large clickable areas, adjustable time limits, and customizable interfaces to make the website more accessible for those with motor disabilities.
  • Ensure compatibility: Guarantee seamless navigation through keyboard and assistive technologies for users with motor disabilities.

4. Cognitive Disabilities

When designing a website, web design services implement accessibility steps thinking about people with cognitive disabilities. These disabilities can impact how a person remembers, solves problems, pays attention, or understands things. To help them, we should use clear, simple language, organize information in a logical way, and give enough time to complete tasks. This approach makes sure our designs are helpful and easy to use for everyone, including those who might process information differently.

How to Design for Accessibility

Creating a website or app that’s easy for everyone to use involves considering all kinds of users. This part of the process is about finding straightforward ways to make your digital content user-friendly. It includes strategies like adding text descriptions to images and designing forms that are easy for people with various abilities to navigate. Web developers implement these steps to make your digital content more inviting and accessible to a wide range of people.

1. Use Alt Text for Images

  • Provide a brief, accurate, and pertinent description of images using alt text to ensure accessibility for users with visual impairments.

2. Use Proper Color Contrast

  • Choose the right color combinations to ensure readability.
  • Use dark text on a light background or vice versa for optimal contrast.
  • Aim for a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1 for normal text and 3:1 for large text.
  • Consider color blindness by avoiding red-green combinations and relying on contrast rather than color alone.

3. Use Headers and Lists

  • Properly structure your content and enhance navigation by using appropriate headers.
  • Present information in a clear and organized manner by utilizing lists.
  • Maintain a hierarchical structure by correctly implementing heading tags (h1-h6).
  • Ensure an orderly presentation of content by using list tags (ul, ol, li).

4. Make Sure Forms are Accessible

  • Ensure clear and concise labels for all form fields.
  • Provide instructions and error messages in accessible formats.
  • Use proper markup for form elements, such as <label> and <input>.
  • Enable keyboard navigation and focus indicators for all interactive elements.
  • Implement logical tab orders to ensure accessibility for keyboard users.

How to Develop for Accessibility

In today’s digital world, it is crucial for designers and developers to prioritize accessibility in their work. By making websites and applications accessible to all users, we can create a more inclusive and equitable online experience. In this section, we will discuss three key ways to develop for accessibility: using semantic HTML, implementing ARIA attributes, and testing with assistive technologies. These web accessibility strategies will help ensure that your digital creations are accessible and usable for everyone.

1. Use Semantic HTML

Use semantic HTML elements like <header>, <nav>, <main>, <section>, <article>, <aside>, <footer> to provide meaning to the content.

  • Structure your HTML in a logical and organized manner, using elements like <h1> to <h6> for headings and <p> for paragraphs.
  • Utilize lists effectively with <ul> for unordered lists and <ol> for ordered lists, ensuring clarity and structure.
  • Employ appropriate HTML tags such as <label> for form labels and <input> with associated <label> for input fields.

2. Use ARIA Attributes

  • Define landmarks using ARIA landmarks to help users navigate the page.
  • Indicate changes in content with ARIA live regions for screen readers.
  • Improve keyboard navigation using ARIA roles to define interactive elements.
  • Ensure proper focus management using ARIA attributes like aria-activedescendant.

3. Test with Assistive Technologies

  1. Conduct automated tests using screen reader software like VoiceOver for iOS or TalkBack for Android to ensure content is accessible.
  2. Engage users with disabilities to navigate through the interface and provide feedback on accessibility barriers.
  3. Verify keyboard navigation and functionality to accommodate users who rely on keyboard input instead of a mouse.
  4. Utilize color contrast analyzers to guarantee sufficient differentiation for users with visual impairments.

Common Mistakes to Avoid in Accessibility Design and Development

  • Ignoring alternative text for images and non-text content.
  • Not providing proper heading structure and skipping heading levels.
  • Using color as the only way to convey information.
  • Implementing inaccessible form elements and controls.
  • Forgetting to test with assistive technologies and real users.

Tools and Resources for Accessibility

As designers and developers, it is our responsibility to create digital experiences that are accessible to all users, regardless of their abilities. This section will provide a comprehensive overview of the essential tools and resources for accessibility. 

We will discuss the use of screen readers for individuals with visual impairments, color contrast checkers for ensuring readability, and accessibility auditing tools for testing and improving overall accessibility. These tools are crucial in creating inclusive and user-friendly designs.

1. Screen Readers

  • Ensure images have descriptive alt text.
  • Use proper heading structure for easy navigation.
  • Optimize form fields for compatibility with screen readers.

Pro-tip: Regularly test your website with screen readers to identify and address accessibility barriers.

2. Color Contrast Checkers

  • Select a reliable color contrast checker tool, such as WebAIM’s Contrast Checker or the Accessible Colors tool from Color Safe.
  • Input the foreground and background color codes or use the color picker to test various color combinations.
  • Make sure that the color contrast ratio meets accessibility standards, such as a minimum ratio of 4.5:1 for normal text and 3:1 for large text.
  • Double-check the color contrast for important elements, including buttons, links, and form fields.
  • Consistently use the color contrast checker throughout the design and development process to ensure accessibility compliance is maintained.

3. Accessibility Auditing Tools

  • Use automated tools like Axe, WAVE, or Lighthouse to scan web content for accessibility issues.
  • Conduct manual audits to verify the findings of automated tools and identify additional accessibility barriers.
  • Engage users with disabilities to test the website or app using screen readers, keyboard navigation, and other assistive technologies.
  • Implement a continuous monitoring process to ensure ongoing accessibility compliance.

When utilizing accessibility auditing tools, be sure to combine automated scans with manual checks and user testing to ensure comprehensive accessibility for all users.

Frequently Asked Questions

1) What is the importance of designing and developing for all users?

Designing and developing for all users is crucial because it ensures that your content is accessible to everyone, regardless of their abilities. This not only makes it easier for users to access your content, but it also promotes diversity and inclusion. Additionally, by catering to users with varying abilities, you can positively impact their lives and create a more enjoyable user experience for all.

2) How can content creators make their content accessible for all users?

Content creators can make their content accessible by incorporating accessibility tools and features, such as screen magnifiers and closed captions for videos. They can also use descriptive alt text for images and ensure that their website and social media platforms are optimized for web accessibility.

3) What are the main accessibility issues that developers should be aware of?

Developers should be aware of difficulty lifting/grasping, cognitive/mental/emotional impairment, vision impairment, and hearing impairment. These issues can affect the ability of individuals to use websites and digital content, and it is important for developers to consider them in their design and development process.

Key Takeaways:

Ensuring that everyone can use and access digital platforms is critical. Beyond simply adhering to guidelines, it’s about creating a more inclusive digital environment. By understanding and considering various disabilities.

We can develop solutions that not only reach a broader audience but also enhance the overall usability and experience for users. This inclusive approach is fundamental in making technology accessible and beneficial for all.

Author Bio

Palak

She is a quality content writer for WordPress, technologies, and small businesses working at WPWeb Infotech – Web Development Company.  She is an incredible team player and works closely with the team to achieve great results. She watches Netflix and reads Non-fiction, self-help, and autobiographies of great personalities.

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APIs Community

What makes up a high-quality API

With third-party APIs, developers can leverage the power of external expertise to enhance the functionality of their applications. However, to ensure success, they must carefully evaluate the quality of APIs before incorporating them into their applications. This chapter aims to investigate the key characteristics that make third-party APIs high-quality, according to developers.

In recent years, application programming interfaces (APIs) have become a key part of modern software development. APIs act as intermediaries that facilitate communication between different applications through established protocols and definitions. By using APIs, developers can leverage the power of other applications without needing custom integrations. In turn, this allows them to focus more on building the core parts of their applications and less on recreating features that already exist or are not feasible.

With this in mind, it is unsurprising that almost all developers (89%) report using APIs in their projects. According to our data, 74% of developers use third-party APIs while 15% state that they only use private or internal APIs. Using private/internal APIs makes it easier for developers to link their in-house applications together and ensures that only authorised personnel can access their systems and internal information. On the other hand, using third-party offerings gives them access to external expertise but introduces additional dependencies that can affect their projects.

high-quality API

74% of developers use third-party APIs

With so many developers relying on third-party APIs to expand the scope of their applications, modern services are becoming increasingly more likely to offer public APIs. However, not all APIs are created equal. Just as high-quality APIs can enhance the capabilities of a given application, adopting a low-quality API can be detrimental to its success. Implementing low-quality solutions can create a wide range of issues such as poor performance, negative user experience, and security vulnerabilities. Therefore, developers must carefully evaluate the quality of APIs before incorporating them into their applications.

In the latest edition of our global developer survey, we asked developers who use third-party APIs to identify the most important characteristics of high-quality API offerings. Our results indicate that developers consider security, documentation and sample code, reliability, ease of use, and performance to be the most important characteristics of high-quality APIs. These five qualities separate themselves from the rest as the core pillars of strength developers look for when considering third-party APIs. In fact, 89% of those who use third-party APIs mention at least one of these characteristics in association with high-quality APIs.​

Security is the most important factor in evaluating the quality of third-party APIs, according to 42% of developers. Using third-party offerings opens up a line of communication with external services that can expose their users to unauthorised access to sensitive data and other security risks. To keep up with the rapidly evolving landscape of threats, developers and modern businesses must ensure that the APIs they use are secure to protect their assets.

Developers consider security to be the most important attribute of a high-quality API

Having access to clear documentation and sample code can make it substantially easier for developers to incorporate APIs into their applications. Our data suggest that 39% of developers consider documentation and sample code to be among the most important qualities in third-party APIs.

These features allow developers to quickly understand the capabilities and limitations that a given API brings and make it easier for them to get started. This goes hand in hand with ease of use, which is mentioned by 37% of developers who use third-party APIs.

On the other end of the spectrum, reliability (38%) and performance (36%) of third-party APIs can directly impact the success of a given project. If an API proves to be unreliable, it can lead to issues ranging from minor errors to system failures and data breaches.

On the other hand, reliable APIs help developers minimise the risk of something going wrong and ensure the highest chances of success in their projects. Similarly, applications can only perform as well as the APIs they use.

Therefore, it is essential for APIs to be fast and capable of handling high volumes of requests to be used in modern applications.

high-quality API

Those who are new to the field of software development tend to work on less challenging problems and can often turn to their peers and mentors for support. As such, they are the least likely (20%) to cite documentation and sample code as an important characteristic of a high-quality API and tend to prioritise other features.

However, as they gain expertise and take on more complex projects, developers begin to appreciate the benefits that clear documentation and sample code bring to the table. In fact, 65% of developers with 16+ years of experience mention documentation and sample code among the most important characteristics of high-quality third-party APIs, surpassing even security (51%).

Highly experienced developers value API documentation and sample code significantly more than beginners

With a greater reliance on self-guided learning, experienced developers become less likely to focus on the community when evaluating the quality of third-party APIs. However, technical issues can arise regardless of experience and may be difficult to resolve or diagnose without expert-level knowledge. In turn, technical support appears to retain its above-average importance for all but the most experienced developers.

high-quality API

With more years of experience, developers gain a deeper understanding of what is essential for their projects. For some, performance may be critical, while others may focus more on ease of use. By focusing on the right characteristics of third-party APIs, developers can enhance the functionality of their applications and deliver better products.

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Community Tips

DevOps 101 for a Dev Who Doesn’t Like Ops

(To the tune of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air

— 

Now this is a story all about how 

DevOps improves software development, here and now 

And I’d like to take a minute, just sit right there 

I’ll tell you why DevOps should make developers care 

— 

In the world of software, development and ops 

Often work apart, and it’s easy to flop 

But DevOps brings them together, for a common goal 

To make software faster, better, with more control 

— 

Now that the sick rhyming has captured your attention, let me tell you why even as a developer with little knowledge of ops knowledge, I’m a big fan of DevOps. It’s so time-saving that I cover the basics, even when I’m the sole developer on a project. Who doesn’t like saving time?  

The basics of DevOps 

So, what is DevOps? At its core, DevOps is a culture and set of practices that aim to break down the barriers between development and operations teams to improve collaboration and efficiency. It involves automating and streamlining the software development process, from code creation to deployment and beyond.  DevOps is not just a set of tools or processes, but a way of thinking about software development. It’s about creating a culture of collaboration, communication, and continuous improvement. With DevOps, developers and operations teams work together to build, test, and deploy software faster and more reliably. 

Additionally, DevOps promotes collaboration and communication between different teams, which leads to a more efficient and streamlined development process. By breaking down the silos between development and operations teams, everyone is on the same page, working towards the same goal. This results in faster and more reliable releases, as well as overall better quality of the product. In short, DevOps is a time-saving and collaborative approach to software development that ultimately leads to better outcomes for everyone involved. 

Why should developers care about DevOps? 

You might be wondering why, as a developer, you should care about DevOps. After all, isn’t that more of an operations thing?  Well, the truth is that DevOps is highly relevant to developers as well. According to the Developer Nation Survey 23 results, DevOps adoption keeps increasing (from 47% to 56% in 1½ years), while most of the implementation work is done by software developers themselves, with an earlier Developer Nation report mentioning only 5% of the DevOps practitioners being DevOps specialists.

In my mind, this makes sense. DevOps is, at its core, a culture of breaking down the walls between devs and ops people. While a specialist can be invaluable in complex implementations, or to help kickstart a culture, the culture itself should be the responsibility of generalists. By adopting DevOps practices, you can save time and streamline your development process. You can avoid manual steps in building and deploying your code, get test results without running tests, and have your changes live in production far faster than you would without DevOps.  Sure, setting up version control, pipelines, testing, and deployments takes some effort. But more often than not – even sometimes when you’re the only one working on the project – the investment is worth it! 

DevOps exists to make your life easier 

This is the bottom line – DevOps is not there to create a new profession of DevOps consultants (just like Agile Software Development isn’t there to ensure Agile Coaches make their bread). It’s there to make the lives of devs and ops people easier.  By adopting DevOps practices, whenever I am actually working with Ops, DevOps makes the collaboration easier as everything is traceable, often reversible,  and even easier to document. This means that if there are any issues or bugs, we can quickly identify where the problem occurred and take steps to fix it. 

According to the Q3,2022 Pulse report DevOps implementation witnesses more instrumental action from the programmers and software developer community with a 45.6% involvement, while the supervisory roles reflect the participation of less than 12% with Tech/engineering team leads at 11.2%, architects involvement at 10.7% and the C-level CIO/CTO and IT management roles at the lowest 10%. Computer and data science students show some practical learning involvement with 13.3%.

DevOps also encourages frequent communication between developers and operations, which helps to avoid misunderstandings and ensures everyone is working towards the same goals. The result is a more efficient and effective development process, with better quality software releases and happier customers. And even when I’m working by myself, DevOps makes it easier to deploy, maintain, and scale my apps. This collaboration can help to identify and fix issues earlier in the development process, reducing the risk of costly delays and downtime caused by issues discovered during deployment or after release. 

Just recently, I was building a .NET MAUI project – my first one – and realised I only had a rough idea of how to build, test and publish an app, and not even that on how to distribute it. The obvious solution was to let someone else figure the details out for me. Luckily, I have someone who knows more about this stuff – namely, GitHub.  Getting the basics to function using GitHub and Visual Studio App Center took me about an hour. GitHub Actions would take about 15 minutes to ship my code – from checking in to having a download available on App Center – and I don’t have to do anything!  I should probably add some tests to the build process, but hey, I’ll add those right after I’m done with the documentation. If you want to read more, the whole article is here.

How to get started? 

Here are some simplified steps to get started with your journey as a DevOps-savvy developer: 

  1. Automate everything you can: Automate your build, testing, and deployment processes using tools like GitHub, Azure DevOps, Jenkins, TeamCity, and GitLab.
  2. Collaborate with Operations: Work closely with your Operations team to understand their needs and to ensure your code runs smoothly in production. 
  3. Embrace Continuous Improvement: DevOps is all about continuously improving your development processes, so always look for ways to streamline and improve your workflows. 
  4. Learn by Doing: DevOps is a hands-on approach, so start by experimenting with new tools and practices on small projects. 
  5. Prioritise Communication: Effective communication is essential to DevOps, so ensure you regularly communicate with your team to ensure everyone is on the same page. 

And remember, DevOps is a journey, not a destination.  By taking small steps towards automation, collaboration, and continuous improvement, you can gradually incorporate DevOps practices into your development workflows and reap the benefits of faster, more efficient software development. Don’t get too attached to any one tool – plenty of tools exist, and you can get tremendous value from many. 

Bio: Antti Koskela is a Microsoft MVP trying to stay current on what’s what in the Azure and .NET world, and a Developer Nation Dev Committee member.

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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
Community

Cheat Sheet – Developers, unite! Have your voice heard.

This is a cheat sheet focusing on the Developer Nation 23rd survey wave, giving you all the key details to make the most out of your experience:

What
11+ years of surveying developers.
The Developer Nation survey has been measuring the preferences, needs and wants of developers for more than 11 years. It’s a dynamic survey where each participating survey taker will have a unique path, based on their own background and experience. 

When
The Developer Nation Community will be launching its 23rd survey wave on June 2 in English. On June 9, the survey will be available in all other languages: Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese Traditional + Simplified, Korean, Russian and Japanese.

Who is it for
Developer Nation is borderless! Everyone’s welcome! 
The Developer Nation survey is global and open to all. In the previous edition, more than 20,000 developers and creators of all levels – from students to hobbyists and seasoned professionals – from 160+ countries, shared their views. 

We want to hear your opinion if you see yourself as a developer, software engineer or tech creator involved in Web, Mobile, Desktop, Cloud, DevOps, Industrial IoT & Consumer Electronics, AR/VR, Apps/extensions for 3rd party ecosystems, Games, Machine Learning & AI, and Data Science.

If you nodded at any of the above areas or descriptions, this survey is for you. Keep reading for the benefits of participating or start now.

Why participate
There are several benefits for those who take the survey. Some of these are:

Prizes
By participating, developers can win amazing prizes and unlock more as they proceed, including a complimentary virtual goody bag packed with free resources. 

Premium access to information
Understanding the trends can be paramount to developers’ next career move. We share the results, data and ecosystem insights with the participants and tech organisations who use the data to improve their developer offerings. 

Giving back and helping others
For each qualified survey response, we will donate USD $0.10 to a charity of your choice. Our goal is to reach USD $1,800+ in donations. Take the survey, pick a charity to support, and help us make a difference.

What’s different this time
Every wave is a new opportunity to give developers what they want. Here’s the latest benefits we introduce in this 23rd wave:

  • Weekly prize draws, including everyone who signs up to take the survey.
  • Special Prizes to be drawn for everyone taking the survey in the first 48 hours (2 winners: Nintendo Switch & iPhone 13).
  • A new way to reward participants: the more questions you answer the more chances you get to win. A participant’s name will be included multiple times in draws depending on the number of questions answered. 
  • Prizes include: Nintendo Switch, iPhone 13, Xiaomi RedMi 11, Samsung Galaxy S22, Amazon Echo Dot 4th Gen, Premium Subscriptions and Licences, Vouchers for online courses and tutorials, Gift cards and vouchers for Amazon, Spotify, Apple Store, Google Play, cash to fund your development projects or towards the gear you need up to $1,000 USD and many more prizes drawn every week.
  • Everyone who completes the survey will receive a virtual goody bag filled with free subscriptions, discounts and vouchers. 

You read this far, which should mean you’re interested. Why not start the survey and share your views on key topics only developers can understand? If you’re short of time, you can save your progress and continue later (you’ll need to sign up to save). 

Are you creating for AR/VR?
There is an additional, exclusive, survey dedicated to Augmented, Virtual and Mixed Reality creators, with the same benefits. AR/VR creators can share their reality views using this link.

Categories
Tools

AngularJS development tools for 2021

Business and economy took the worst hit during the 2020 pandemic and the situation is making a comeback again this year. The adversities also paved the way to recognize the digital approach towards business. While digital marketing, websites, social media prevailed and was put to good use by businesses even before this situation, the pandemic made it a necessity rather than an option.

Businesses joined the online race to boost their company and stay afloat in these difficult times. All these together showed us how a business model can be re-thought based entirely on the internet.

The shift to e-commerce specifically called for simpler technologies for businesses as well as users and as a result, exponential growth in the requirement for web development tools has been witnessed. 

One such option is the AngularJS development tools. It is an open-source application that is particularly useful for making single-page applications. Angular JS Development Companies are significantly using the AngularJS Frameworks to simplify their works. 

We have listed some of the top AngularJS Development tools which are trending in 2021 here to give you an insight into the best options you can look out for.

5 Trending AngularJS development tools in 2021

With the help of AngularJS development tools, you can easily create a platform to promote your business—from a simple interface to comparatively complex applications. The following are top trending AngularJS platforms that are growing in popularity by the day:

Karma

This is one of the most popular testing frameworks for AngularJS Development. The primary perks of using this one are the option to test the application on a browser as well as a different device like tablets or smartphones. Unit testing, E2E testing, and midway testing are primarily conducted in this.

Features of Karma AngularJS Framework:

  • Versatile and can be used on all browsers
  • Open-source platform
  • Can be easily integrated with Travis, Jenkins, and Semaphore
  • Debugging is made easier
  • Integration is smooth

Pros and cons:

  • You can test it on real devices.
  • There are several plug-ins available to make your task simpler.
  • However, it is a bit slow compared to many other such tools.

Jasmine

If you want to test Javascript Codes, the Jasmine AngularJS Development tool is the one for you. It is driven by a behaviour approach and an independent framework that is not reliant on DOM javascript. 

Projects based on NodeJS, particularly find this useful, and any other project where the javascript works will also benefit from this. Accenture, Gitlab, Walmart are a few of the corporations among the 200 others which are built using Jasmine.

Features of Jasmine are as follows:

  • It is a fast framework with lower overhead.
  • There is an included library that you can access while using this framework.
  • It can be used for both browser and Node.
  • It does not require DOM.

Pros and Cons:

  • It is an open-source framework with a set of straightforward syntax for easier testing.
  • Coding is easier here and you also get community support along with thorough documentation.
  • The front end, as well as the backend test, are both simplified.
  • However, asynchronous testing can be a little bit tricky.

AngularFire

AngularFire is known as one of the best backend development tools. Dynamic API features and 3-way data binding can easily be facilitated with this tool. When you need a rapid development process, this is going to work. The most attractive feature of AngularFire is its ability to synchronize real-time binding and save the data in automated mode.

Features of AngularFire that make it so popular:

  • Data Storage is automatic.
  • Data syncing is done in real-time.
  • Binary files like videos and images are managed easily.
  • Firebase services are easily projected and injected.

Pros and Cons:

  • High security for the Angular roots and flexible and dynamic API.
  • The developer experience is simple and effective.
  • Documentation features are not considered up to the mark by many developers which is the only drawback of this AngularJS tool.

Djangular

It comes with several functionalities that help to focus on the primary development process and based on a philosophy called DRY or Don’t Repeat Yourself. Many leading e-commerce websites and social companies adopt this tool because it has a robust content delivery network.

Scalability, security, and rapid development are assured by this AngularJS development tool.

Features of Djangular:

  • You can get namespacing AngularJS content.
  • The frameworks are very flexible.

Pros and Cons:

  • It is protected by CSRF Security.
  • It is a reusable app and you can develop project-specific content.
  • Though an open-source development tool, it is a bit too advanced for beginners.

Mocha JS

Another popular JavaScript testing framework, Mocha JS, is known for flexibility and overall precise reporting. Many inbuilt features are incorporated in this tool and can also run on Node.JS. It sanctions asynchronous testing with mapping and broadcasting.

It also has global leak detection capabilities, browsing support, asynchronous support, and much more. In short, the Mocha.JS is ideal for producing suites and custom projects using its functionalities.

Features of Mocha.JS:

  • The framework has several features.
  • You get browser and async support.
  • Auto exit and testing support are also available with Mocha.JS.
  • There is a JavaScript API for testing.
  • The ease of set-up of this AngularJS tool is unbeatable.

Pros and Cons:

  • There is optimum test reporting and offers much more flexibility.
  • The multiple browser compatibility is commendable.
  • You get both TDD and BDD or Test Driven Development and Behavior Driven Development.

When you are trying to develop an app or website for your business, there are so many different features and aspects to keep in mind. This calls for using the right development tools. By opting for any of the above-mentioned tools, you can fulfill the requirement thoroughly. 

Now that you know the different popular AngularJS development tools and what their features are, you can determine easily how to put any of these to good use. Boosting your entrepreneurial ventures even in these difficult times is made simpler when you embrace the right technology.

About

Harikrishna Kundariya, is a marketer, developer, IoT, ChatBot & Blockchain savvy, designer, co-founder, Director of eSparkBiz Technologies. His 8+ experience enables him to provide digital solutions to new start-ups based on IoT and ChatBot.

Categories
Tips

Productivity tips busy developers need to know

Software development is a dynamic field. This has always meant that it’s essential for developers to take an active approach, and stay on top of changes. And that, in turn, means that the best developers tend to have reliable ways of keeping themselves productive.

In 2020, this trait — being able to stay productive — is arguably more important than ever. Numerous industries related to software development have taken hits, and many developers are working under different conditions than they’re used to. The ones who are best able to keep up their standard and complete their projects are the ones who are going to handle these challenges most effectively. And that leads us to our main focus: a few productivity tips busy developers need to keep in mind.

Eliminate Distractions

This is a general tip for anyone working from home, like so many developers are doing today. Basically, when you’re working from home, anything from family members and roommates, to television, to your own mobile devices can become a serious distraction, and detract from productivity. Fortunately, avoiding this issue is a simple matter of discipline. Creative Bloq posted tips on avoiding distractions that can help give you an idea of what to focus on. The best ideas they highlighted include getting comfortable physically, closing unnecessary apps, and shutting yourself into a home office all as ways to start walling yourself off from distractions.

Frankly, we see all of these as part of one bigger tip: establishing a home workspace. Particularly these days, with more people working from home, it’s important to have an area where you can be comfortable and able to focus on projects. For starters, we’d recommend an ergonomic desk and chair and a piece of lounge furniture (even a beanbag can be brilliant). Make sure temperature control and lighting are available to you. And if possible, bring in some natural light and plants. All of this will make the workspace cosy and liveable, allowing you to feel your best, focus, and stay put without feeling shut in. With a space like this, you’ll be certain to see a spike in productivity.

Schedule (Including Breaks)

In just about any situation — working from home or otherwise — a clear schedule can boost productivity in a few different ways. A Verizon Connect piece on how to work intelligently explored this idea, suggesting (rightly) that scheduling every task does two things. First, the article said, scheduling gives you a clear picture of what you have to do in a given day; second, it gives you a clear path toward a small sense of accomplishment when you complete outlined tasks. These benefits can absolutely lead to more productivity by software developers.

How you schedule will depend somewhat on your specific work and the projects you have on hand. But we recommend breaking things down (something we’ll speak on more below), and writing your schedule out in a format that allows you to cross off tasks. Even a simple Excel sheet or note-taking app (such as Evernote, OneNote, or even a simple but perfectly functional Apple Notes) can serve as a scheduling book, where you can lay out each day’s activity and cross items off as you fulfill them.

Break Down Projects

As you go about scheduling, and looking for that little sense of accomplishment you get by moving through tasks, it’s also a good idea to break down projects into parts. This might not always be doable, but in development there are often ways to segment jobs into different stages. This can first and foremost make a job seem less formidable, and make you more willing to dive in and start doing the work. But it also leads to more of that sense that you’re checking things off your list and progressing successfully through a day’s work.

These benefits are in fact what many developers get out of tools like Asana and Jira, which exist in part to help organize projects and segment tasks in an orderly fashion. While it’s easy to think of “project management” as something meant for entire teams, busy developers make excellent use out of the idea and the tools that help to make it easier.   

Automate Where You Can

“Automate stuff” was arguably the most interesting idea within Developer Circles Lagos’s developer productivity ideas posted on Medium. While that same post had some other interesting points, what showed through is the notion that people working in software development tend to have some idea of how to do a little bit of automation — say, by writing scripts that accomplish certain tasks on their own. And this sort of effort can help to simplify a job in a way that significantly improves productivity.

Automation may not help with every project, and naturally, some developers will be better able to take advantage of this idea than others. But generally, automating where you can is a sound strategy. Even using your development skills to automate a sort of record-keeping that logs your hour-to-hour activity can be extraordinarily helpful. This example would afford you a better picture of your own working habits, and enable you to adjust accordingly.

Additionally, it’s worth noting that you may not even have to do this sort of automation on your own, given the ready-made tools that exist within modern work programs. As an example, consider Slack’s “Standup Bot,” which is essentially a built-in project management assistant that can help to keep you on task.

Maintain Personal Health

Personal health doesn’t always come up with regard to on-the-job productivity, but it’s a mistake to assume it’s not a factor. As stated in our piece ‘5 Challenges for a Freelance Developer’ it’s important not to forget to “eat well, sleep and keep an eye on your health” in order to stay productive. Simply put, if your body and mind aren’t healthy, you’ll be less prepared to focus and have productive workdays. You’ll be a better and more prolific developer the healthier you are.

Written/Edited by: Amanda Fuller

Amanda Fuller is a freelance writer for over seven years. Since becoming freelance she has written extensively about work practices, both at home and in the office. She maintains that in order for a company to be successful they must pay as much attention to their employees as their profit margins. In her free time she practices yoga.

Categories
Community

Developer Prizes: Announcing our Q2 2020 survey prize winners!

Thanks to all of you who took part in our Q2 2020 Developer Economics survey! Your responses make a difference and contribute to the developer ecosystem. We’re super excited as it is now time to announce the full list of our developer prizes and their winners!

Developers who take our surveys earn 100 points for every new survey completed, plus 10 points for providing their feedback about the survey. You can see the list of benefits and rewards here.

Exclusive Community Prize Draw for members with 801+ points – Microsoft Surface Pro 7 and One Plus 7T

WinnerCountryPrize
j*****@h******.c** MexicoMicrosoft Surface Pro 7
m*****.t*********@g****.c** LithuaniaOnePlus 7T

Exclusive Community Prize Draw for members with 801+ points – Prizes: Vouchers, branded stickers, water bottles, surprise swag, and socks

WinnerCountryPrize
j*****@h******.c**MexicoMicrosoft Surface Pro 7
m*****.t*********@g****.c**LithuaniaOnePlus 7T
S********@h******.c**Pakistan$50 Udemy or Amazon voucher
a*********@y****.c**United States$50 Udemy or Amazon voucher
l*@l****.c**Colombia$50 Udemy or Amazon voucher
p****@p**********.n***Australia$50 Udemy or Amazon voucher
c****@h******.c**United States$50 Udemy or Amazon voucher
c*******@y****.c**United StatesBranded stickers and water bottle
z*********@g****.c**TaiwanBranded stickers and water bottle
b*****@e*************.c**United StatesBranded stickers and water bottle
r******@g****.c**CanadaBranded stickers and water bottle
d*.b****@g****.c**CanadaBranded stickers and water bottle
t*******.h******@g**.d*GermanySurprise swag
s******.s******@g****.c**GermanySurprise swag
l***********@g****.c**CanadaSurprise swag
m*****@c*******.i*ItalySurprise swag
s******.t**@g****.c**MalaysiaSurprise swag

Here’s a sneak peak at the surprise swag!


developer prize - surprise swag

Exclusive Community Prize Draw for members with 501+ points Prizes: Vouchers, surprise swag, branded stickers and socks

WinnerCountry Prize
j***********@g****.c**Japan$50 Udemy or Amazon voucher
a***********@g****.c**Malta$50 Udemy or Amazon voucher
a*************@g****.c**Spain$50 Udemy or Amazon voucher
f***********@g****.c**Nigeria$50 Udemy or Amazon voucher
n.s*******@g****.c**United Kingdom$50 Udemy or Amazon voucher
k******@g****.c**ItalySurprise swag
t****.a*******@g****.c**AlgeriaSurprise swag
p**********@g****.c**South AfricaBranded stickers and socks
j********@g****.c**United StatesBranded stickers and socks
k*****.k******@g****.c**GreeceBranded stickers and socks
n********@w****.c**IsraelBranded stickers and socks
s*********@g****.c**PortugalBranded stickers and socks

Exclusive Community Prize Draw for members with 301+ points Prizes: Branded surprise swag, stickers and socks

WinnerCountryPrize
b*****@g****.c**HungarySurprise swag
g****.o**@o******.c**United KingdomSurprise swag
t***********@g****.c**United StatesBranded stickers and socks
m*********@g****.c**United StatesBranded stickers and socks

General Prize Draw

WinnerCountryPrize
h*********@g****.c**EgyptiPhone 11
d*****@y*****.r*RussiaJetBrains All Products Pack
o*********@g****.c**MexicoGitKraken Pro license
a******@o******.c**KenyaGitKraken Pro license
g****.c*****@h******.c**CanadaGitKraken Pro license
s******.a***@g****.c**IndiaGitKraken Pro license
z***********@g****.c**RussiaGitKraken Pro license
p************@g****.c**IndiaGitKraken Pro license
n************@g****.c**JapanCloud Guru x 6 months license
j*****@g****.c**RussiaCloud Guru x 6 months license
d************@g****.c**IndiaCloud Guru x 6 months license
m*******.m*******@g****.c**RussiaRaywenderlich.com 3 months Professional subscription
e****.s******.9*@g****.c**RussiaRaywenderlich.com 3 months Professional subscription
A*********@y*****.r*RussiaRaywenderlich.com 3 months Professional subscription
f.a*****@g****.c**TurkeySitePoint premium subscriptions x 6 months
n***********@g****.c**RussiaSitePoint premium subscriptions x 6 months
b****@l***.r*RussiaSitePoint premium subscriptions x 6 months
v****.m**********@g****.c**UkraineSitePoint premium subscriptions x 6 months
n*******@g****.c**RussiaSitePoint premium subscriptions x 6 months
s*************@y****.c*.u*United KingdomSeagate STGX5000400 Portable 5TB External Hard Drive HDD
r*****.c****.g*******@g****.c**VenezuelaCorsair K68 RGB Mechanical Gaming Keyboard
m*****.a********@g****.c**Nigeria$20 Amazon voucher
i***.f****@m*.e**.a*Australia$20 Amazon voucher
t***********@g****.c**Russia$20 Amazon voucher
a************@g****.c**Ghana$20 Amazon voucher
j************@g****.c**United States$20 Amazon voucher
g*****@g****.c**France$20 Amazon voucher
n***********@g****.c**Brazil$20 Amazon voucher
m***.l**.p*******@g*********.c**Japan$20 Amazon voucher
m*************@g****.c**India$20 Amazon voucher
d*******@g****.c**United States$20 Amazon voucher
m******@g****.c**Canada$20 Amazon voucher
m***.d*******@g****.c**NetherlandsBaseCode field guide – full kit
h********@g****.c**RussiaBaseCode field guide – full kit
h***@j*************.e*SpainBaseCode field guide – full kit
t*************@g****.c**South AfricaBaseCode field guide – full kit
d****.b****@f*******.c**FranceBaseCode field guide – full kit
a****************@g****.c**UkraineBaseCode field guide – full kit
r****@m***.r* RussiaIntroduction to Algorithms, 3rd Edition (The MIT Press)

The State of AR/VR Survey Prize Draw

WinnerCountryPrize
h******@g****.c**MexicoOculus Quest 64GB
i******@g****.c**United KingdomSketchfab 12 month Pro License
m*******.t*****@g****.c**United StatesOctaneRender Studio for Unity – 12 months license
d*********@g****.c**United StatesiPhone 11
a****.q**********@g****.c**CanadaVufori12 months Basic License
a***.p********@g****.c**IndiaVR Ninjas Virtual Reality Mat
n******.c******.f@g****.c**ChileVR Ninjas Virtual Reality Mat

Extra Prize Draws

WinnerCountryPrize
s*******.1*@g****.c**India$50 Amazon voucher
j**********@i*****.c**BrazilDeveloper Economics hoodie
s*****.b********@g****.c**United StatesAugmented Reality: Principles and Practice (Usability) book
m***.l****@g****.c**United StatesThe Pragmatic Programmer: 20th Anniversary Edition, 2nd Edition: Your Journey to Mastery book
f********@b*.r*KazakhstanInsomniPlus license ($50 value) – Debug APIs like human, not robot
p*********@g****.c**VietnamDeveloper Economics hoodie
s*******@g****.c**RussiaSoft Skills: The software developer’s life manual
s******.l*****@g****.c**South AfricaDeveloper Economics hoodie
t*****************@g****.c**South Africa$20 Amazon voucher
r*************@g****.c**NigeriaThe 10X Rule: The Only Difference Between Success and Failure book
r**********@g****.c**GermanyDeveloper Economics hoodie
2*******@w**.d*Germany$20 Amazon voucher
m********@b*.r*RussiaGame Engine Architecture, Third Edition book
m**************@n****.c**IndonesiaDeveloper Economics hoodie
m************@m***.r*Russia$20 Amazon voucher
m*****.b****@g****.c**SpainPrecision: Principles, Practices and Solutions for the Internet of Things book
g*********.s**@g****.c**VietnamDeveloper Economics hoodie
l*********@g****.c**India$20 Amazon voucher
d********@g****.c**NigeriaDeep Learning (Adaptive Computation and Machine Learning series) book
j**************@y****.c**United StatesDeveloper Economics hoodie
s***********@g****.c**Russia$20 Amazon voucher
s***********@g****.c**RussiaRaywenderlich.com 3 months Professional subscription
m******.b********@g****.c**IndiaDeveloper Economics hoodie
x*******@y****.c*.j*Japan$20 Amazon voucher
v************@g****.c**UkraineMastering Bitcoin: Programming the Open Blockchain 2nd Edition book
o******.m******@c**********.n**FranceDeveloper Economics hoodie
d*******@g****.c**United States$20 Amazon voucher
p***********@m***.r*RussiaThe Phoenix Project: Novel about IT, DevOps, and Helping Your Business Win
j********@g****.c**South Africa$20 Amazon voucher
g*************@g****.c**IndonesiaDeveloper Economics hoodie

Dicoding Prize Draw – Dicoding Learning Path (Beginner Android or Beginner Web class or mixed) Exclusive developers taking the survey from Indonesia

Winners
g**********@g****.c**
t**************@g****.c**
w********@g****.c**
y*******@g****.c**
d***************@g****.c**
r***********@g****.c**
a***************@g****.c**
s**************@g****.c**
a**********@g****.c**
h**********@g****.c**
w******@g****.c**
f*********@g****.c**
a***************@g****.c**
a******************@g****.c**
r****.h****@g****.c**
t****.i********@g****.c**
w**********@g****.c**
w**************@g****.c**
d**************@g****.c**
m***********@g****.c**
r********@g****.c**
a************@g****.c**
i******@g****.c**
s*********@g****.c**
m*******@g****.c**

We’ve already reached out to the winners by email. Do you recognise one of the email addresses as yours but haven’t received your email yet? Please contact us at community@developereconomics.com

The lists above only include prize-draw winners and not runner-ups. If the prize draw winners do not claim their prizes within 10 workings of us contacting them, then runner-ups will be invited to claim them instead. 

Some of the winners have generously donated the cost of their prize to Techfugees, the charity we supported during the survey. 

We’d like to say a special thanks to the lovely people at BaseCode, Dicoding, GitKraken, SitePoint, Sketchfab who supported us during our Q2 2020 Developer Economics survey by donating a prize – you rock!!

If you’re not a winner, don’t despair, our next survey, our 20th (!!), will be live later this year. We’re already on the hunt for some amazing prizes, and open to your suggestions. What prizes would you like to win? Drop us an email or send us a Tweet.

To ensure that you are notified when our next survey is live, sign up. Don’t forget to make sure the survey notification option is ticked.

Categories
News and Resources Tips

Developer Certification Programs to help boost your career

You are finally ready to pursue your career as a developer. Well, a big fat congratulations to you! It’s high time your homework begins! Whatever you choose to become, it does require a sincere commitment of time, effort, and resources (e.g. developer certification programs). You will need to make some hard choices such as which programming language to kick off with (find out which are the top programming languages communities to look out for), or what development area to focus. Keep in mind that on average developers are involved in five sectors concurrently. However, on top of programming and coding skills you will also need to work on your project management skills. You also may need to dive into the Agile Manifesto

Can you guess how many software developers are there in the world? According to the most recent Global Developer Population report,  in the beginning of 2019 there were just under 19 million active software developers. Out of these, 13M are software professionals.

We have used our current methodology to produce estimates of the global developer population for the past four half-year periods. Each estimate was produced independently of the others. This reveals an increase in the developer population of 4.2M developers since mid 2017, or an annual growth that hovers around 20%.
We have used our current methodology to produce estimates of the global developer population for the past four half-year periods. This reveals an increase in the developer population of 4.2M developers since mid 2017, or an annual growth that hovers around 20%. This growth rate seems to be accelerating, although it is based on just a few periods.

Day in day out, the population is growing at over 20% annually. This means you need to stand out from the competition. Now before we proceed any further, we need to understand the value of developer certifications. Why are they important? Why is there so much hype on gaining certificates and investment done in training? The added value is pretty much substantial. And merits can be bifurcated into two categories: What value certificates bring to individuals? How they affect decisions made by organizations?

Value to individuals

  1. Professional credibility: This describes your future relationship between co-workers and supervisors. You demonstrate the fact that you have developed certain skills that need to be possessed to succeed. Also, you are willing to put all the time and effort that needs to get certified. 
  2. Personal Satisfaction: There are times when we feel like an expert. After several years of knowledge, we step into the workspace with confidence and end up asserting ourselves.
  3. Salary: An individual with more IT certifications has the potential to make much more than those with just one certification. Additional certifications are not a bad thing after all. 

Overall professional growth and career advancement require you to learn present and upcoming technologies and enhance the skills you currently possess. 

Value to organizations 

  1. Job requirements: With the continuous advancement in technology, there’s a need to have subject matter experts on new topics. 
  2. Filling skill gaps: According to many software development companies, skill gaps are can be put a strain and the best way through these, is extensive training. Of course, there is no denying the fact that certified employees can lead to greater productivity. They can increased workforce morale, as well as knowledge shared across the entire department.  
  3. Retention – Job satisfaction results in greater staff retention. Employees who feel fulfilled and satisfied from inside are less likely to pursue other employment.

It’s Time to make the right choice – Answer the following questions

  • What do I want to accomplish? 
  • What am I interested in? 
  • Have I done my homework yet? 
  • What resources should I consider using? 
  • What’s next? 

Further below you will find certain software developer certification programs that can surely aid you in boosting your career.

1. Microsoft (MTA): This certification, in particular, is crucial for high school and college students around. Right from web development to software development, mobile, gaming, and more, the program offers it all! It depends upon you whether you achieve certification on a single track or several. 

2. Microsoft Azure: I am pretty sure you must have come across this certification. After all it is one of the most highly recognizable in the IT industry. This certification in particular also has the potential to carry a considerable cachet. Furthermore, with Azure, you’ll build, manage, and deploy scalable, highly available, and performant web applications.

3. Oracle (OCP, OCM, OCE): Unlike others, Oracle offers numerous Oracle Java Certifications at several levels such as Associate professionals (OCP), Master (OCM), Expert (OCE). The professional-level certification typically requires you to have an OCP Java Certification for a programmer. Otherwise, you must have a Sun certified Oracle Java Certification for programmer credential as a prerequisite. Exams taken here are all multiple choice and some include scenario-based questions as well. Also, there is the option of Oracle certified professional MySQL course, for developers who write applications for MySQL database servers. Fortunately, this slot has no prerequisites but Oracle itself does recommend you take the MySQL for developer certification. This exam is single-level and focuses on practitioner-level skills in all aspects of developing MySQL applications: architecture, syntax, design, modification and the list goes on.  

4. Amazon Web Services (AWS): Amazon Web Series provides scalable cloud computing for creating web applications. Being an AWS certified developer means the associate level is for developers who design and run applications on the AWS platform. Also, here the credentials come with no prerequisites but that doesn’t mean you should take it lightly. You must take a multiple-choice exam on AWS fundamental, plus designing, developing, and deploying cloud-based solutions, security, and debugging.

5.  Salesforce: With the rise in Salesforce development companies, organizations are searching for professionals with this certification. Initially developed as one of the original providers of enterprise customer relationship management (CRM). It now focuses on many facets of enterprise cloud computing and applications. The company’s entry-level certification identifies developers capable to design as well as build custom applications and analytics using the Force.com platform. Salesforce recommends that you take the Building Applications with Force.com and Visualforce training courses to prepare for the exam. To achieve certification, you must pass an exam that covers application design, the Force.com platform, data modelling, user interface, logic, data management, reporting, and analysis. Next, you can move on to the Salesforce.com Certified Advanced Developer certification. This focuses on skills required to use Apex and Visualforce to build custom applications, create test plans and perform tests, and manage the development lifecycle and environments. The organization’s Developer certification is a prerequisite. 

6. Scrum: Another interesting developer certification course you must consider is in the Scrum alliance. For those new to the Agile Manifesto , Scrum.org  is a member-based organization. It promotes the use of Scrum through education, advocacy, and networking/collaboration. The entry-level Scrum Alliance certified Scrum Developer (CSD) certification targets developers who understand Scrum principles and have knowledge of specialized Agile engineering skills.  

7. Project Management: Last but certainly not least, the Project Management Institute. An organization that offers numerous software development related certifications including the PMI Agile Certified Practitioner (PMI – ACP). The cert recognizes developers with knowledge of agile project management principles, practices, tools, and techniques. All you require having is: 

  • 2000 hours of general project experience working on project teams, or an active PMP or pgMP certification
  • 1500 hours working on Agile project teams or with methodologies
  • 21 contact hours in agile practices

The exam covers agile tools, techniques, knowledge, and skills. PMI has a strong relationship with academia. You’ll find that many colleges and universities offering courses on its certifications include the PMI-ACP.

What other courses have you taken or are considering taking? Have you attended any physical courses lately?

Charles Richard, is a Business Analyst at TatvaSoft UK. Besides his profession, Charles likes to share some new and trending technical aspects. To know more about his leading software development company in London, please visit www.tatvasoft.co.uk

Categories
Events

Developer Conferences 2019: The Roundup

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

Keep an eye on these if:

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

 

Best Dev Free Conferences: 

AllDayDevOps

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

  • November 6, 2019
  • Online
  • Free

 

DevConf.IN 2019

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

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

 

Best Dev Conferences: Series of Worldwide Conferences 

DevOpsDays

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

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

 

DevOps World | Jenkins World

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

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

 

Monitorama

Monitorama focuses strictly on software and infrastructure monitoring.

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

 

DevOps Enterprise Summit Europe & USA

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

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

 

KubeCon/CloudNativeCon USA & China

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

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

 

Best Dev Conferences in Europe: 

DevOpsCon

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

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

 

Devopsdays Amsterdam

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

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

 

CloudNative London

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

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

 

JAX London

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

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

 

JokerConf

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

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

 

Devoxx Belgium

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

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

 

dotJS 2019

The world’s largest & sharpest JavaScript conference.

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

 

Devternity

The conference that turns developers into architects and engineering leaders.

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

 

Best Conferences in North America: 

Agile + DevOps West

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

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

 

Apple WWDC19

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

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

 

Velocity Conference

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

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

 

Open Source Summit

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

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

 

ApacheCon

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

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

 

Microsoft Ignite

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

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

 

Cybersecurity & Cloud Expo 2019

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

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

 

AWS re:Invent 2019

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

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

 

Best Dev Conferences in APAC: 

 

SREcon Asia Pacific

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

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

 

Rootconf 2019

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

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

 

PHPConf.Asia 2019

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

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

 

RISE:

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

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

 

Open Source Summit Japan

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

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

 

DevOps Talks Conference

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

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

 

CIO Leaders Summit Indonesia

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

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

 

Xilinx Developer Forum

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

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

 

Best Dev Conferences in South America:

 

The Developer’s Conference

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

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

 

Ekoparty Security Conference

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

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

 

WorkTech Buenos Aires

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

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

 

InfoComm Colombia

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

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

 

The 7th International Conference on Software Engineering Research and Innovation

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

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

Best Dev Conferences in Middle East & Africa:

 

AI expo Africa

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

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

 

International Conference on Science, Engineering & Technology – ICSET 2019

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

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

 

South Africa 2019

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

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

 

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

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

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

 

Africa Arena

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

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

 

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

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