by Marthe Rana | Jun 13, 2018 | APIs, Developer Community, Developer Marketing, Developer Outreach, Developer Population, Developer Relations |
Evans Data Press Release, SANTA CRUZ CA June 13th
As the population of software developers worldwide continues to grow, the hot spots top growth rate are changing. While the United States currently has the largest population of developers, India will overtake the US by 2023 according to Evans Data’s recently released Global Developer Population and Demographics Study. The top nation for growth however is China, where the growth rate of the developer population is forecast to range between 6% and 8% each year leading up to 2023.
The Global Developer Population and Demographic Study, now in its 25th edition, is the definitive developer population estimate, updated every six months. The result of extensive secondary research, the study finds 23 million developers worldwide in 2018 with projections to reach 27.7 million within five years. Global survey data laid atop the population estimates show technology adoption figures worldwide as well as by region. and offer insights into estimates on numbers of developers such as how many developers in each region are developing in the Cloud, how many use Block chain, etc.
“The US can be viewed as the cradle of software development and has thus has always had the largest developer population,” said Janel Garvin, CEO of Evans Data Corp, “However, emerging countries are definitely catching up. This is true overall and also in the adoption of various leading edge technologies, where we see a very strong uptake in China, India and also Brazil.”
Population trends and estimates cover many different types of development in the most recent study. Additional points discovered in this edition include: 7.2 million developers currently developing in the Cloud with the number of developers in the APAC region doing this almost double the number in North America.
The new Global Development Population and Demographics Study provides developer population estimates by region and for major countries within regions as well as worldwide estimates and growth projections. Demographic estimates include age, gender, years experience, education and more. Technology adoption estimates include Host and Target Platform Adoption and Migration, Cloud, BlockChain, Tool use, Tech adoption, High Performance Computing, and other topics.
See the complete Table of Contents and Methodology here: Table of Contents
So what does that mean for developer relations? According to the Evans Data Developer Relations Programs Survey, the number of developers who are in a formal developer relations program reached 83% – that’s over 19 million developers involved with developer programs! That showcases now more than ever, its vital to ensure you understand the needs of the developers you are targeting, perfect your outreach methods, and have the program elements in place required to attract and retain them.
For more insight on developer relations programs, check out this annual study with over 156 pages of insight – Developer Relations Program 2018
by David I | Nov 8, 2017 | Developer Outreach, Developer Population, Developer Relations, DevRelate, Newsletter |
We often get asked how many developers there are working in the world. This sounds like a simple question and at the same time the term “developer” does not fully convey the spectrum of how a developer self describes who they are and what they do. If I refined a developer more specifically as a “professional developer” would that create a clearer definition as someone who gets paid for programming? Is having the professional developer moniker mean that they have a related job title, use a specific number of programming languages, spend a specific amount of time developing, know a wide range of development tools, platforms, frameworks, libraries and architectures? Depending on who you talk with, there are many additional titles and terms we use to talk about who and what a developer is.
How Developers Self Identify?
There are many ways to talk about who writes programs for a living and for fun. When Evans Data (EDC) works with our clients, we are often helping them to understand how many professional developers there are in the world and how this number is growing. The research results are published in the EDC Global Developer Population and Demographic Study and also appear in EDC press releases, infographics and presentations:
EDC research shows that there are approximately 22 million professional developers in the world today. At this year’s Apple World Wide Developer Conference (WWDC 2017) Tim Cook announced that Apple has 16 million registered developers for their devices and platforms (up 3 million from the previous year).
What Developer Titles do you Track?
In a developer relations program, depending on your product, service, device, platform, framework or other offerings, you’ll reach out to a range of different types of developers. You will need to communicate and create content that speaks to the various different developers and expertise levels. Here are a few (of the many) ways to name someone that builds software for a company, for their customers and for themselves:
- Professional Developer
- Application Developer
- Systems Developer
- Full Stack Developer
- Modern Developer
- Programmer
- Software Engineer
- Hacker
- Maker
- Coder
- Hobbyist
- Situational Developer
- Occupational Developer
- Citizen Developer
What types of Developers does your Developer Relations Program speak To?
if your developer outreach program identifies additional developer personas, send me an email with the job titles that you reach out to.
David Intersimone “David I”
Vice President of Developer Communities
Evans Data Corporation
davidi@evansdata.com
Blog: https://devnet.evansdata.org/
Skype: davidi99
Twitter: @davidi99
by David I | Jun 6, 2017 | Developer Community, Developer Population, Developer Relations, DevRelate, Webinar |
The value of segmenting your target audience is well known to marketers across industries. Populations don’t exist as a homogeneous group but always have variations that color their perceptions and their adoption of product offerings. The same is true for developers.
Software developers can be divided in segments based on many factors. These might include technologies they use, where they work, what gets their synapses firing, what programming languages they use, what motivates them, etc. Once developer segments are defined, you can start organizing your existing developer community and attracting additional developers to your developer program.
Creating developer personas is one of the first steps to applying more modern developer marketing techniques in a technology world that is more and more individualized. This DevRelate webinar will introduce you to different types of developers.
Agenda
- Developers Wear several hats
- Large and small companies/teams
- Today’s developer
- Platforms, languages, frameworks, tools
- Membership and success
- Motivations, aspirations, worries and fears
- First steps to creating developer personas
- Q&A
Dates/Times
Note: This webinar is offered several times. Select the date and time that works best for you using the drop down list on the GoToWebinar registration form. You can also see the webinar times shown in your time zone on the GoToWebinar registration form.
Tuesday, June 20, 2017
- 7am PDT (Santa Cruz) | 9am CDT (Chicago) | 10am EDT (New York) | 2pm GMT | 3pm BST (London) | 4pm CEST (Frankfurt)
- 10am PDT (Santa Cruz) | 12noon CDT (Chicago) | 1pm EDT (New York) | 5pm GMT | 6pm BST (London) | 7pm CEST (Frankfurt)
- 5pm PDT (Santa Cruz) | 8am CST (Beijing Wednesday, June 21) | 10am AEST (Sydney Wednesday June 21)
Thursday, June 22, 2017
- 7am PDT (Santa Cruz) | 9am CDT (Chicago) | 10am EDT (New York) | 2pm GMT | 3pm BST (London) | 4pm CEST (Frankfurt)
- 1pm PDT (Santa Cruz) | 2pm CDT (Chicago) | 3pm EDT (New York)
Register Now to Reserve your Seat: https://register.gotowebinar.com/rt/3599119755299893761
Who Should Attend
- Managers & Directors of Developer Programs
- Technology & Developer Evangelists
- Business Development Managers & Directors
- Product Marketing Managers & Directors
- Marketing Managers
- Product Managers
- Research Managers
- Corporate Communications Managers
- Heads of Developer Marketing
- ANYONE who deals with developers!
Presenter
David Intersimone “David I”, Vice President of Developer Communities, Evans Data Corporation
by David I | May 18, 2017 | Developer Population, Developer Relations, DevRelate |
As part of keeping developers up to date on your company’s products and services, your developer relations program staff should keep track of what is happening with the operating systems that developers use for desktop, server, and mobile platforms. A great way to keep up to date is to bookmark some of the following dashboards that report version usage patterns for users, developers, devices, desktops and platforms.
Evans Data Developer Surveys – tracking host/target OS
| Evans Data Corporation was created to fill the demand for market research, market intelligence, and strategic planning in the software development industry. Since then we have become the industry leader in market intelligence focused on all areas of development from software to hardware to mobility.
At EDC we have in-depth and focused experience working with high-tech professionals, and we specialize in conducting market research in the IT and development community. We are experts in analyzing technology trends and attitudes. We know how to speak the language and ask the right questions and more importantly, we can understand the answers.
You will find host and target operating system developer usage and plans for the future in the bi-annual Global Development Survey. Evans Data’s other developer surveys can also help you target your products and services for versions of databases, cloud systems, IoT devices, AI and more. Click on the image below to see the list of EDC research and how it can help you in your developer relations outreach efforts.
Most developers will use a Windows based PC for their development even though they may be targeting Windows and other operating systems and devices. Developers target a variety of operating systems running on desktop/laptop PCs, Smartphones, Tablets, Cloud, and Embedded devices. The top two target areas are desktop/laptop PCs and Smartphones.
You will find additional research results for these host and target systems in the EDC bi-annual survey reports. |
 |
Development Related Industry/Platform Dashboards
In addition to the Evans Data developer research, as a developer myself, I also keep track of additional dashboards covering desktop/laptop PC use, mobile OS version use and programming language trends.
There are several operating system, platforms and device based version dashboards that you can also use to track adoption and impact on developers. Most notable are the Google/Android and Apple mobile operating system adoption dashboards.
Are there other Dashboards that you Use?
If you use additional, publicly available dashboards to track developer, platform, smartphone, device, etc. trends, send me an email and I will update this blog post.
David Intersimone “David I”
Vice President of Developer Communities
Evans Data Corporation
davidi@evansdata.com
Blog: https://www.devrelate.com/blog/
Skype: davidi99
Twitter: @davidi99
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidi99/
by David I | May 15, 2017 | APIs, Developer Population, Developer Relations, DevRelate |
In the forty-seven years since I wrote my first program, I can honestly say that I’ve never met a developer that I didn’t like. In all those years I have created many different types of applications and met tens of thousands of programmers in buildings, in cities and at conferences across the planet Earth. While source code and hardware are two of the things that most developers have in common, there are many other tangible differences that uniquely identify each of the more than twenty-one million professional developers building cool systems and apps. Beyond programming professionals, there is a greater number of humans (and bots) that are also creating solutions using automation – sometimes called citizen programmers, solution developers, occupational programmers, and other non-traditional software engineering designations.
Of course, there are popular platforms and programming languages that bring developers together. And, the Internet has helped bring us even closer together. Yet, the global developer population is very diverse in many ways. One of the key aspects of building a robust developer community is to identify your developers.
When I’m asked about developer sizes, I usually smile and reply with something like “small, medium, large, extra-large, and massive”. When I was focused on building developer tools, my elevator pitch was “I work for a company that makes the software that developers use to make the software that humans use.”
We can use demographics, psychographics and firmographics to place some developers into manageable buckets. Yet, there are so many other ways to categorize, quantize, and organize developers based on who they are, what they do, and what they create. Some developer qualities can be defined by the types of apps they create, the computer languages they use, the type of devices they target, the social media they are active in, and so on.
A developer program is only as strong as its community. No matter the industry, to have a thriving business you need to reach out to developers who can benefit your product, platform, service, device, etc. Drawing developers into your community with world class resources, tools and activities will create a win-win environment that benefits their careers and your business. A good way to focus your efforts on a target developer audience is by categorizing developers into several, quantifiable “personas” or groups based on social characteristics, tech adoption, industry, and other characteristics.
Developer Personas I have Known – a top 10 list
Here is my top ten list of developer personas for people I have worked with over my career (names have been removed to protect the tech fanatics – you know who you are):
- Machine Language Developer – will only use assembly language and machine code to create fast running reusable functions.
- Just Give Me the Spec Architect – can take any product design concept (detailed on the back of a napkin or in a complete requirements specification) and create an elegant app solution.
- Tool Chain Engineer – lives to integrate disparate development tools into a cohesive build environment.
- Compiler Jockey – loves to create new programming languages and work with the back end code optimizer to make target processors smile (and computer fans turn on).
- Extreme Hacker – able to dig deep into any device, bios or application code to find a problem and create a patch to fix it.
- Weekend Maker – in under 40 hours with no sleep can create a truly wondrous child’s toy using an Arduino or RaspberryPi board and some tiny-C code.
- Old School Coder – creates multi-device reusable libraries using C and inline assembler that can be consumed by any programming language.
- Service Modernization Engineer – can quickly create a new REST/JSON based service API based on any older distributed computing APIs (RPC, DCE, CORBA, SOAP, etc.)
- Cloud Seeder – can quickly migrate an internal application to a public/private/hybrid cloud based infrastructure for every available, industry leading cloud service.
- Hyper Productive Software Engineer – able to produce thousands of lines of production C++ code each week for multi-year projects.
Does the Software Development Industry have a “Library of Developer Personas”?
I have found many sources of developer personas but have yet to find a complete library, compendium, database, list, etc. Maybe this is because there are so many identifiable and not so definable developers. Developer personas can often be specific for an industry, company, architecture, platform, device, service, and other characteristics that align with a company’s offerings. Just as our industry has “body of knowledge” collections like the SWEBOK, wouldn’t it be great to have a Developer Persona Body of Knowledge (DPBOK)? Who wants to help create one?
Discovering Developer Personas Specific to Your Technology – Evans Data Can Help
The value of segmenting your target audience is well known to marketers across industries. Populations don’t exist as a homogenous group but always have variations that color their perceptions and their adoption of product offerings. The same is true for developers.
Software developers can be divided in segments based on many factors. These might be how they make their money, who their users are, which technologies they use, or what their motivations are for selecting a particular technology. They may be discovered as they naturally occur through cluster analysis, or they may be pre-defined to fit categories.
Once developer segments are defined, the value in any persona study comes from profiling those segments. Profiling allows you to recognize distinct personas so you can make targeted appeals to each group. Understanding the personas of your targeted developer segments allows you to:
- Communicate more clearly with each persona
- Provide the tools and technologies each persona uses
- Provide the level and type of support each expects
- Find developers that match the personas for effective outreach
- Understand where each persona can be reached
Today, marketing is becoming a science and setting personas is the first step to applying modern marketing techniques in a world that is more and more individualized. Don’t try to lump all your developers together in a group when there are many differences that can be seen and addressed through identifying personas. Evans Data can help deliver the insights you need to really target each of the segments you need.
What are some of your Developer Personas?
I’m continually putting together a growing list of developer personas across multiple industries, technologies, products and services. If you’d like to share some of our target developer personas, send me an email.
—
David Intersimone “David I”
Vice President of Developer Communities
Evans Data Corporation
davidi@evansdata.com
Blog: https://www.devrelate.com/blog/
Skype: davidi99
Twitter: @davidi99
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidi99/
by David I | May 8, 2017 | Developer Outreach, Developer Population, Developer Relations, DevRelate |
It used to be that only a very few specialized software companies cared at all about developers – and usually because they were selling programming tools or platforms. Now every company needs to be connected and to work interactively with their clients, their partners, their suppliers, and their customers and to do that they publish APIs. Evans Data’s recently released Developer Program 2017 survey report found that formalized programs have become a necessity for companies wishing to have their APIs adopted.
Developer Programs and APIs
Your developer relations program needs to have close participation and cooperation with your engineering team in order to inform, educate, and support community members for the lifetime of your APIs. Your company’s success and your program’s support of developers depends on:
- how you prepare for the release of the APIs,
- the types of technical content you create to support an API,
- how you prepare community members for the impacts of API changes,
- and how to help your community members get ready for API deprecation and shutting down of an API.
You and other members of your company might wonder what the eventually payoff will be for all of your hard work. A recent preliminary report on “The Impact of APIs on Firm Performance” by Boston University Questrom School of Business says that “firms adopting APIs see increases in sales, net income, market capitalization, and intangible assets. API use also predicts decreases in operating costs in some specifications.API adoption leads to a 12.7 percent increase in market capitalization”.
Ten years ago less than half of all developers were in a developer program. Today more than 80% belong to one and 62% of developers say they don’t use APIs that aren’t supported by a Developer Relations program. Evans Data’s recently released Developer Program 2017 survey report found that formalized programs have become a necessity for companies wishing to have their APIs adopted.
“Today companies need to be interconnected and to take advantage new innovations. This often means they need to publish APIs and once you publish an API you have a platform. Once you have a platform you need developers, and that means you need a program to support them”, said Janel Garvin, CEO of Evans Data. “We see the proliferation of developer programs throughout all places and industries.”
The Developer Relations 2017 report is the 18th annual survey of developers focusing on developer relations programs. Topics include Developer program features, ROI and Program Measurement, Developer Outreach, Training, Spurring Participation, Resources, App Stores, Tech Support and Documentation.
View the complete Developer Relations 2017 report Table of Contents and Methodology.
What does your developer program provide to support your APIs?
Send me an email if you provide your developers with additional API information and how you handle API versioning, deprecation, and shutdown.
David Intersimone “David I”
Vice President of Developer Communities
Evans Data Corporation
davidi@evansdata.com
Blog: https://www.devrelate.com/blog/
Skype: davidi99
Twitter: @davidi99
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidi99/
