Stack Overflow recently announced the results of their annual developer survey. This year, over 50,000 developers in 170+ countries answered 45 questions ranging from the programming language they use the most to whether they preferred Star Wars or Star Trek, and everything in between. Maybe that is why they call it “the most comprehensive developer survey ever conducted.”
The survey provides insights into popular technologies, diversity, compensation, and sci-fi preferences. You can go ahead and get your geek on with the survey results here. But in this post, we will interpret the results from an application delivery perspective, focusing on the technologies and challenges.
First things first, JavaScript overtook Java as the most popular tag on Stack Overflow. In fact, all the front-end technologies have gained popular ground. With consumers demanding engaging experiences across different devices, front-end and mobile technologies will only grow more popular. I'll go out on a limb here and make a prediction that next year Android will overtake Java to become the second most popular tag on Stack Overflow.
AngularJS now seems to be the go-to web application development framework. In just a few years, its popularity has skyrocketed and it appears to be the dominant JavaScript framework out there. The Stack Overflow survey results corroborate this fact as AngularJS appears multiple times in the top technology combinations preferred by front-end developers. It also figures prominently in the technology combinations of full-stack and back-end developers. Even among developers who are not developing with the language or technology, AngularJS is one of the top 3 technologies that they would most want to work with.
Looking back, WaveMaker made a prescient choice by rebuilding its RAD Platform a couple of years ago using AngularJS. For those who are new to WaveMaker, versions prior to Studio 7 were based on the Dojo framework.
Amidst the rapid technological changes, the challenges to application delivery remain and continue to put pressure on IT to deliver applications at the speed of business. As per the Stack Overflow survey, developers cited the following challenges at work:
Sounds familiar isn't it? One way to broadly categorize these gripes would be under:
Do share what, according to you, are the challenges and solutions in the comments section.
Read more insights on app development, technology, and WaveMaker on our blog.