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Software Developers: A Profile of the Modern-Day Developer
Forrester Research recently looked at the types of projects and technologies that software developers are currently working on to get an idea about which technologies are gaining traction and what kinds of applications we might expect in the near future.
Somewhat surprisingly, the projects that the majority of developers surveyed are working are lagging industry trends. Less than a quarter of all enterprise developers are developing for the cloud, and only about 30 percent of all developers have ever contributed to the development of a mobile app. Part of the reason for the slow migration to these newer technologies is that businesses still need to keep their legacy apps running and just don’t have the bandwidth to take on new platforms. The report found that compared to larger enterprises, small and mid-sized businesses are more likely to dabble with newer technologies like mobile (34 percent) and NoSQL (15 percent).
“read the trade press and you’d think that PCs and laptops have gone the way of the dodo, consigned to the dustbin of history by smartphones and tablets. Developers are certainly building more mobile apps than ever, but web applications and relational database applications are still a primary focus,” says the Forrester report.
The report notes some characteristics of developers that have jumped to the cloud, finding them a bit of a different breed:
- Cloud developers tend to be early adopters of technology in general. 19 percent of cloud developers use Windows 8, for example, compared to only 3 percent of non-cloud developers
- Cloud developers tend to have more years of programming experience than non-cloud developers. 71 percent have been programming for at least six years and 11 percent have been programming for more than 20 years.
- Cloud developers report greater job satisfaction. 64 percent feel that they are challenged every day while only 36 percent of non-cloud developers do.
The Forrester report describes developers as follows: “Modern software developers are creative, learn socially, and generally enjoy being developers. They’re creative professionals, not drones – and they’ll function better in co-located ‘feature teams’ of three to five people in a development shop with high transparency and a full understanding of the value business sponsors need them to deliver… Most developers are intrinsically motivated. The way that developers view their craft adds fuel to the argument that writing software is more creative pursuit than algorithmic endeavor. We constantly speak with professionals who ‘are developers’ — they don’t just ‘develop software.'”
