I worked in the smartphone industry before it came of age. Our mission was “a smartphone in every pocket” at a time when simple feature phones like the Motorola RAZR were the must-have communications device. Within a few years of our early projects, the competitor, Apple, launched the iPhone. The rest is history. The App Store opened its doors, the stars aligned, the technology dream was realised and smartphones went on to rule the world.

The Fortnite phenomenon has captured the attention of the gaming community and exemplifies many of the changes that have occurred over the past 18 months in the industry. Gaming has become much more social, and watching expert gamers execute perfect moves can be just as much fun as playing them. This creates a new channel for developers to promote their games and new ways to generate revenues. Fortnite first gained popularity when rock star streamer Ninja and rapper Drake streamed their game-play on Twitch. This shift is influencing revenue models and opportunities for developers. The trend is also helping to shift development to the web.

When developers evaluate new technologies, one of the elements they often look at is the size and strength of the community surrounding that technology. “Can I get help and support from peers when needed?” It’s one of the reasons why open source technologies tend to be so popular. Conversely, technology vendors regularly signal their virtue with community numbers: “Our product is used by millions of developers, choose us!”

The Developer Economics survey Q4 2018 is live and better than ever in the new 16th edition! Calling out all software developers to take part, tell us what’s relevant in 2019 and beyond and what keeps you on your toes! We have new features, prizes, sci-fi theme, and other surprises ready for you!

Social good has many forms and thankfully there are several resources in the tech arena to support people and projects that most of us have not thought to do. We approached our two non-profit media partners whose support we had during our previous Developer Economics survey (Q2 2018) to answer a few questions about their work and give us a peek at not-for-profit activities in tech, from their perspective. Introducing James Sugrue, co-Founder of donate:code and Aggelina Mila, coordinating Business Development at Social Hackers Academy.

The web echoes with cries for help with learning data science. “How do I get started?”. “Which are the must-know algorithms?”. “Can someone point me to best resources for deep learning?”. In response, a bustling ecosystem has sprung to life around learning resources of all shapes and sizes. Are the skills to unlock the deepest secrets of deep learning what emerging data scientists truly need though? Our research has consistently shown that only a minority of data scientists are in need of highly performing predictive models, while most would benefit from learning how to decide whether to build an algorithm or not and how to make sense of it, rather than how to actually build one.

Here are some of the most interesting insights from the latest State of the Developer Nation 15th edition, based on the data from 20,500+ developers in 167 countries, who took part in our Developer Economics survey in May-June this year. We reveal top skills developers want to learn in 2019, the most popular programming languages globally, and to how many developers are big data and real-time predictions relevant.

In our new blog post series Dev Evolution, we talked with Yeeply on how they overcome the challenges of building a platform that bundles certified developers for web and apps, marketing and design services.

Developer Economics survey Q2 2018 prize draw winners

Conferences, developer events and workshops are a great way to connect face to face with professionals who share the same passion as you. We’ve featured a selection of developer events from around the world.