The Developer Program Leaders survey is back! Time to refresh what we know about the work, challenges and priorities of developer marketing, developer relations and developer tooling professionals.
In the previous survey wave, we discovered that the
#1 challenge for Developer Relations professionals was growing their community.
Developer Program Leaders Survey wave 10
Are you working in:
Developer Marketing
Developer Relations
Developer Advocacy
Developer Tooling
With a developer program?
What is yours? What KPIs are you using to measure success?
Answering questions like these helps map the world of Developer Marketing, Relations and tooling.
At the same time, it helps the global community understand, relate and learn about the challenges these professionals face, the metrics they use, and where they spend their time and budget.
Full access to the findings both in a report that illustrates the highlights and key graphs, and in an interactive session where our research analysts and the community will come together to discuss key findings and impact on the industry.
A chance to win exclusive DevRelX swag
You participate in a community effort to understand and improve how your peers work and set their strategy
How long is the survey?
It is short. You’ll need ±8 minutes
This survey helps better understand how and what developer marketing, relations and tooling professionals work on, including how they:
Run their developer programs
Prioritise their work
Segment their audience
Measure success
Justify the value of their developer program to senior management and more!
What types of questions does this survey ask?
Which regional markets does your strategy target?
Which resources take most of your budget?
What are the main challenges for your Developer Relations efforts this year?
Do you segment your developer audience? How?
Here are some results from the previous survey wave.
It’s insights like these that you will be able to access by responding.
Do you want to help professionals elevate their DevRel game? Have your say!
Sustainable software engineering (SSE) is the practice of minimising the environmental impact of software. It is an emerging discipline that integrates sustainability into software practices and architecture, hardware, and data centre design. The ultimate goal of SSE is to reduce the amount of carbon emissions that software applications are responsible for by integrating various approaches to the software development lifecycle. Commonly, SSE is implemented by utilising more efficient or ‘green’ coding practices, but there are a variety of approaches available to organisations and developers alike.
In our recent report titled “Who’s integrating sustainable software engineering principles?”, which was based on data collected from the 24th edition of our Developer Nation survey, we discovered that 76% of developers sometimes or always implement at least one SSE principle and that this rises to 82% amongst professional developers. In this blog post, we take a closer look at how developers’ roles, decision-making power and involvement in DevOps activities influence their utilisation of SSE principles.
Involvement in DevOps* is a powerful predictor of utilising SSE principles in development projects. These developers are responsible for implementing SSE principles, which takes place at an infrastructural level. This said, as we will soon see, developers higher up the chain of command report using SSE principles more often than DevOps practitioners, with decision-makers being the most likely to adopt such approaches. This demonstrates that whilst decision-makers provide the impetus for adoption, it’s those in DevOps roles who undertake the implementation.
Developers involved in DevOps are considerably more likely to utilise SSE than those not involved
Indeed, we see that developers involved in DevOps are much more likely to utilise SSE approaches in some capacity than those not involved. The changes in overall SSE utilisation amongst developers doing different DevOps activities, such as continuous integration or automated testing, are not meaningfully different. However, when taking a more granular look at precisely which SSE principles are implemented by developers involved in different DevOps sub-disciplines, we see that it’s those who programmatically provision and manage infrastructure and those who monitor performance and test for security vulnerabilities who implement the widest variety of SSE principles. Developers involved in these stages of the DevOps lifecycle appear to be particularly well-placed to have maximum impact, and vendors should ensure that any SSE tools and products integrate well with these parts of the DevOps technology stack.
*In our Developer Nation surveys, we don’t ask developers to self-identify as being involved in DevOps. Rather, we determine their involvement by asking them whether or not they undertake different DevOps-related activities, such as using CI/CD or creating automated tests.
Note: The Developer Nation survey is now live. You can respond and help us better understand developers and produce insights that help you address developers’ needs.
Our data also show that the more involved developers become in tool purchasing decisions, the more likely they are to integrate SSE principles into their development projects. The reason behind this is twofold:
SSE is a relatively new discipline, and so those who are not currently buying tools or components are less likely to have had the opportunity to integrate tools which facilitate SSE development into their projects.
More senior developers have a better understanding of the cost-savings and other benefits of adopting SSE principles, and so a larger incentive to integrate such approaches. They also have the power or influence to effect such a change.
Senior decision-makers are the most likely to integrate SSE principles into their development projects
We can see the effect of decision-making seniority reflected in the usage of SSE by developers in different roles. 91% of CIOs / CTOs / IT managers utilise SSE approaches, but 78% of developers in unspecialised programmer roles do as well. Currently, the implementation of SSE principles is of strategic concern, with a high-level implementation rather than taking place closer to the code. It may be that SSE approaches will follow secure coding practises and ‘shift-left’ as developers take more personal responsibility for the sustainability of their code in the future. DevOps practitioners and decision-makers will still need to be involved though – organisational and infrastructural implementation of SSE principles will continue to have a large impact.
For now, though, SSE practices are typically implemented in the domain of specialists such as DevOps practitioners and decision-makers, and we see that developers in these roles are often motivated by environmental concerns and believe they have a part to play in combating climate change. Vendors wishing to encourage the adoption of SSE products and principles may find traction in appealing to the consciences of decision-makers in organisations.
We also find that DevOps engineers and other specialists, as well as CEOs, are most challenged by measuring the impact of integrating SSE into their development projects. As companies cannot manage what they are unable to measure, it is clear that the lack of a metric is a key hurdle in SSE being more broadly adopted. Removing this pain point could also act as a push to drive adoption.
In our Developer Nation survey, we also asked which SSE principles developers are integrating. The list of SSE principles included activities such as creating carbon-efficient software, minimising data transmission, or optimising code. Looking more closely at which principles are being integrated by developers in different roles, we see that those in managerial positions are among the most likely to integrate every SSE principle we asked about in our latest global developer survey. However, given that few developers in leadership positions are responsible for the implementation, many developers who are closer to the code disagree. Programmers, architects, and DevOps engineers all integrate most of the SSE principles we ask about much less often than average. This suggests that there is a disconnect between the SSE principles that leadership wishes to adopt and what is actually implemented.
A closer look at DevOps practitioners reveals a further surprise – as we saw previously, these developers are some of the most likely to integrate SSE principles overall, but they are actually less likely than average to integrate many specific SSE principles. This indicates that DevOps engineers are selective about which principles to integrate.
This isn’t the whole story, though. Other specialists such as embedded developers or network, hardware and site reliability engineers integrate the widest range of SSE principles into their development projects – though the cumulative impact of the small numbers of developers in these niche roles is small, they are highly active in the SSE space and represent a cohort of early adopters with a wide range of involvement in SSE.
In this post, we’ve learnt that SSE remains in the realm of specialists and leadership, and whilst software development tool companies should cater to the needs of developers in these roles, it’s also worth considering how to drive wider adoption of SSE. Should you be interested in learning more, we take a closer look at developers’ motivations and challenges in the report.
For now, SSE sits firmly in the domain of specialist developers and leadership
Did you like this blogpost? Discover more about our research and have your say in the Developer Nation survey.
You’re familiar with at least one AI-assisted development tool; That’s right, the ChatGPT. Its popularity has skyrocketed in the last few months and with good reason.
It is designed to assist users in generating human-like text but it’s been helpful to developers too, as they can leverage ChatGPT to automate certain tasks, generate code snippets, assist in writing documentation, or even prototype conversational interfaces. While ChatGPT is primarily a language model, it can be used in the development process to aid in various aspects of software development.
In our 24th edition of State of Developer Nation, we asked developers if they use AI and how. This led to a dedicated chapter on all the new technologies that captivate developers’ imaginations. The data from our survey suggest that 63% of developers engaged in some aspect of AI-assisted development, making it evident that this technology is rapidly maturing and transforming from a mere trend to a valuable tool.
AI-Assisted Development: A Growing Trend
While overall engagement has experienced a slight decline of 4% over the past year, the nature of developer involvement has undergone a fascinating shift.
More developers are actively working on or learning about AI-assisted development, showing a 6% increase in engagement.
Simultaneously, the number of developers with latent interest has decreased by 6%.
This dynamic suggests that AI-assisted development is maturing and gaining practical applicability in the development landscape.
Generative AI: Unleashing Creative Possibilities
Alongside AI-assisted development, generative AI has emerged as a new and exciting technology.
With 57% of developers actively involved or interested in generative AI, curiosity and excitement abound. While AI-assisted development still leads in adoption at 17%, generative AI projects attract 14% of engaged developers.
The Many Uses of Generative AI
Developers use generative AI in three main ways:
as a helpful tool for their development process
by integrating it into projects through APIs
or even by creating the models themselves.
Ongoing investigations are exploring these usage patterns to uncover more insights into this groundbreaking technology.
Challenges and Opportunities
Although generative AI is gaining high engagement, there are factors that affect its adoption among developers.
Some developers may be hesitant to rely solely on generative models for critical or security-conscious tasks.
However, there is a growing adoption of generative AI for visual assets in software development, which reduces the risks of errors and security vulnerabilities.
Overcoming Challenges
Developers who work on generative AI models face the challenge of needing a large amount of training data.
However, certain tools offer the ability to fine-tune pre-trained models for specific tasks, making this challenge easier to overcome. As developers become more familiar with assistive and generative AI technologies, we can expect a surge in their adoption, leading to innovation and creativity.
Leadership’s Role
Interestingly, leaders in C-suite and other leadership positions show higher engagement rates with emerging technologies.
About 49% and 50% of those who approve tool expenses or budgets are actively involved in AI-assisted development.
This trend suggests that the revolution in AI-assisted development is driven by leaders who recognize its potential.
Looking Ahead: The Changing Landscape:
When we take a broader view, we see a cyclical pattern in the adoption and interest in emerging technologies. Developer interest has dropped by 5% overall, while adoption has increased by 4 percentage points.
This contrast indicates a dynamic shift in developer preferences, marking a change from previous trends.
In summary, AI-assisted development is rapidly evolving and attracting developers’ attention. Generative AI opens up exciting possibilities, and leadership engagement plays a crucial role in driving its growth. Cryptocurrencies continue to be intriguing, and the landscape of emerging technologies is constantly shifting.
Did you find this article interesting? Download the full free report to learn about:
The rest of the technologies that capture the developers’ imagination
Security threats in software development evolve at lightning speed in today’s digital age. With the average cost of a security breach in a hybrid cloud environment hovering at a staggering $3.6 million, it’s crucial for organisations to prioritize software security.
This is why we recently partnered with Cisco; to uncover developers’ exposure to API security exploits, their outlook on security, and how they use automation tools to detect and remediate threats. We did so by exploring the findings from two global surveys that targeted enterprise developers and created the “Developers and Shift-Left Security” public report.
How is our report unravelling?
1. Security is a key priority for enterprise developers
Security threats are on the rise, with our survey data proving it; in fact, a whopping 58% of enterprise developers have had to tackle at least one API exploit in the past year alone. And to make matters worse, nearly half of them have experienced multiple API exploits during that time.
As modern applications increasingly rely on microservices, securing the APIs that connect these services becomes even more crucial. But with developers juggling multiple APIs, it can be a challenge to stay on top of security. That’s why it’s essential to prioritise security from the very beginning of development to avoid wasting time and effort on reworking code and dealing with exploits later on.
When it comes to security breaches, it’s best to prevent them altogether. But if they do occur, organizations must be prepared to act quickly.
Shockingly, our survey found that only one-third of enterprise developers can resolve API exploits within one day of a breach occurring.
By treating security as a top priority from the start of the development lifecycle, organizations can increase preparedness and avoid costly mistakes down the road.
2. How do enterprise developers address security?
The philosophy behind shift-left security is all about putting security at the forefront right from the start. It’s like having a VIP seat reserved for security at the decision-making table!
By addressing security concerns early on in the development process, you can save a ton of money compared to dealing with security issues during deployment or after a security breach. In fact, our data shows that many organizations are already investing significant effort in identifying security vulnerabilities during the early stages of development, and as a result, have implemented additional security measures.
When do enterprise developers address security?
3. Automation makes things faster and less error-prone than manual operations.
We asked developers whether they use automated approaches to security, such as scanning tools or automated fixes.
The most likely group of developers to adopt automated security approaches are key decision-makers and team leads who influence, manage, or set the strategy for their teams’ purchase initiatives (90%).
This means that many developers still don’t use automation tools for security. However, it’s crucial for developers to use the best tools available to ensure they produce secure code.
In conclusion, APIs are crucial for modern software systems, but security exploits are a common occurrence.
A shift-left approach is vital for enhancing application security from the earliest stages of development.
While more than half of enterprise developers are already shifting left, less experienced developers are lagging behind. To support this approach, automation is essential, with two-thirds of developers using automated security tools.
However, developers motivated by gaining experience are less likely to use automation, so organizations need to balance the need for learning with the importance of using the best security tools available.
With the ongoing effects of the recent global pandemic and the European energy crisis, companies have had to adapt to changing environments both internally and externally. The ability to respond quickly to these challenges has become a defining characteristic of successful businesses.
We recently partnered with Aiven to explore how digital native companies have evolved their data management practices in response to these challenges.
We define “fast growth” as the approach of adapting quickly to change and innovating, which is crucial for companies that want to expand.
The data presented are based on a Q3 2022 survey of nearly 500 IT professionals at digital native companies worldwide.
What was happening in the past?
Firstly we’ll see which systems companies stopped using and which ones they plan to use in the future.
We found that when adopting a new data management solution, professionals must consider all options. Replacements occur when other products offer better benefits, not because the replaced system failed.
Data model fit is crucial when choosing a product, while pricing is essential when replacing one, especially for small businesses. Large enterprises prioritize technical support.
Fast-growing companies prioritize service availability and disaster recovery capabilities, with 43% prioritizing this when adopting a data management tool.
Inadequate backup/snapshot functionality is a common reason for replacing a tool, with 19% of fast-growing companies citing it. Conservative-growth companies are less likely to replace tools based on this feature.
While data model suitability is at the forefront of reasons for adopting data management tools, pricing is often the primary factor when it comes to finding alternative solutions.
What is happening now?
What our analysis shows, for now, is that fast-growing companies prefer fully-managed services, while conservative-growth companies lean towards self-managed solutions, except for search technologies.
Interesting highlights:
On average, companies with an eye for scaling up are 16% more likely to use fully-managed services and are highly focused on search technologies and event streaming/message queue systems.
Faster-growing companies tend to be more likely to adopt open-source search technologies, with OpenSearch emerging as the most popular search technology among them.
43% of those who work for companies with fast-growth business models prioritise service availability and disaster recovery capabilities when adopting data management products.
What does the future of management systems look like?
56% of respondents are looking to adopt at least one new system in the near future.
Relational databases currently have the lead in adoption (78% of respondents), but the demand for streaming data is increasing with the reliance on artificial intelligence, and event streaming and message queues are on track to become the second most popular data management system type among digital native companies.
In terms of fully-managed services, security and performance are the most likely features to grow in importance, while pricing and cost optimization are the least likely.
Fast-growing companies are more likely to adopt open-source data management products, while conservative growth counterparts are more concerned with scalability.
Sustainable practices are becoming more important when selecting a DBaaS vendor, with a higher likelihood of prioritizing reducing environmental footprint over-optimizing costs.
Adoption of data management tools?
We dedicated a special section of our report to measure adoption. We look at 9 data management tool categories and see what % of the respondents are currently using or planning to use each data management system type.
Does this align with your goals? Download the full free report to access all insights here.
A word from Aiven
Aiven’s cloud data platform helps your business reach its highest potential by making your data work for you. It provides fully managed open-source data infrastructure on all major clouds, helping developers focus on what they do best: innovate and create without worrying about the limitations of technology. We like to think that Aiven is not only a cloud data platform but also an extension of your team. We are dedicated to helping you to succeed by removing barriers and finding the right solutions – with the help of the best data technology there is.
About SlashData
SlashData has been surveying developers for more than 17 years. We talk to 30,000+ developers globally, on an annual basis. Leading tech brands rely on our insights for their developer-facing strategy. Leverage the rich data and our deep insights to segment, grow and engage your developer community by addressing their needs – directly.
Software is officially everywhere. Today, no matter what we do, we work in a tech business. We’ve been expecting this for a long time now. In fact, we bet our business on it.
Developers, developers, developers 2000
Before developers were coined the new kingmakers, before CEOs pointed out all companies are tech companies; SlashData was tracking software developers and trends. Nearly two decades ago, we believed developers were designing the world we were moving quickly to become. Since then, the world has changed more than a few times. Leading to the irony of the newest trend. Our daily feeds are flooded by 2 contradictory highlights:
Learning how ChatGPT and AI software like it makes our lives and jobs easier
Mass tech layoffs
Well, with every challenge comes opportunity, and we decided to take a step back and find our clarity, to see our vision once again. Up till now we have been proud to say SlashData helps the world understand developers and developers understand the world, but why?
What is the value we create as a result?
A value-first approach
We started asking – What is the core of our business? What is the reason for our existence in the vast universe of 0s and 1s? Understanding Developers is still our core. Quite simply, it’s what we do. We help technology companies, all companies, across industries, understand developers in order to make the right investment decisions. Know your customer, know your user and don’t forget – know your non-user. Then, data is still in our DNA – as it should be. How can you make decisions confidently otherwise? Intuition isn’t cutting it. Let’s face it, maybe we are in the position we are today, because too many people make major investment decisions based on hunches and assumptions. This is why SlashData is so critical to the way businesses should make decisions. Now more than ever, investment decisions must be supported by data. Decision making backed by data is the only way to optimise spending, create efficiencies and keep jobs. Lastly, once you get down to the core of what we do – we listen to the market. We listen to developers. Tools, products, and solutions must be reactively built. If you’re not addressing a need, you are creating a solution for no one’s problem. Listening to developers, hearing their needs, preferences and whys, and then reacting to it is how you do that.
Mission to the future
This is how we will empower developers to code the future. Our vision is to give a voice to the developers that is amplified and spread to the world’s largest companies to help them make the right decisions, spend less on mistakes, and effectively, (dare I say it?) make the world a better place. Here’s what will map our next steps
Vision – Empowering developers to code the future
Mission – Understand developers. Inspire the future of technology
SlashData’s Mission and Vision 2023-onwards
We have the data, it’s now your turn to listen to it and Inspire the future of technology as a result.
Have you tried NGINX? Have you worked with a web server or reverse proxy?
For those who have been living under a rock, NGINX is a web server that can also be used as a reverse proxy, load balancer, mail proxy and HTTP cache. It is also free and open-source software, released under the terms of the 2-clause BSD license in 2004.
Last year, we collaborated with F5 NGINX to explore their community. We designed a survey that ran between August and September 2022 with more than 2,000 respondents worldwide.
In this report we conduct an in-depth exploration of the following:
Profile of NGINX users.
We provide an overview of the survey respondents’ profiles in terms of their geographic location, role, and size of their organization, while also focusing on their use cases and the challenges they face in application (app) and API delivery projects.
What did we discover?
31% of all development roles also identify with leadership roles
44% of employees at large enterprises have nothing to do with security compared to 29% and 27% for those working at medium-sized and small businesses, respectively
The largest issue faced by the NGINX community is a lack of technical skills.
When it comes to app and API delivery use cases respondents are working on, we find that nearly 50% are currently using web servers, 36% reverse proxies, and 34% load balancer
Organisational approaches to APIs and the importance of App/API features.
We then dive deeper into apps and APIs, by examining the degree to which organizations are adopting four key API first practices:
leveraging APIs as sources of revenue,
designing the API first when building services,
aligning APIs to their overall digital strategy,
And designing APIs to be reusable.
Furthermore, we examine how these practices vary across company size.
We also explore how important security, scalability, and observability features are in app and API delivery projects.
One interesting highlight:
A higher share of those with no security responsibility recognises that user authentication and authorization are very important, compared to those who build security features into their apps.
Technology choices and development environments.
Moving forward, we look at the technology choices and development environments of NGINX community members, with a focus on their workloads, Kubernetes adoption/maturity, where their code is run, and attitudes towards open source software.
We examine how role and organization size affects each of these topics, and compare the profiles of those with low and very high workloads.
Some interesting findings in this chapter include:
77% of the respondents who use a container orchestration tool are using a Kubernetes-based one.
Scalability is the number one motivation for Kubernetes adoption
The top 3 code deployment environments are public cloud, web client/front-end, and on-premises servers.
Management, security, and monitoring/observability tool usage.
Finally, we take a look at which management/security and monitoring/observability tools the community uses, discuss cross-usage, and explore the differences between the profiles of those who use NGINX and those who don’t.
Among other things, we found that:
Those in SecOps roles strongly favour 3 tools in particular: Google (excluding Firebase), SecureAuth, and Duo.
44% of respondents are currently working on authentication or authorization use cases
Those in Leadership roles are more likely to depend solely on NGINX configuration management tool.
Make sure to download the complete report to find out more on the importance of App/API features as well as on the usage on monitoring, security and management tools
Interested in finding out more about your community? Let’s talk
Developer Program Leaders survey is now live! Have your say and access more results like the ones in this article.
If you have been following Developer Relations and Marketing for a while, you might have noticed how the community is becoming a more and more integral part of all strategic activities. Developer Relations is becoming (if not already) a community-led effort.
There is a huge benefit to any vendor to maintain a community for all the reasons that data shows us. If we can enable developers get more out of a product, if we can enable them to be excited about the product, share their experience with their peers and also progress through the community member’s lifescycle from new joiner to expert, we are helping them progress in their career and we’re also getting them more invested in our product and ecosystem. If you keep those core needs in mind, that’s when vendor communities start to add value.
Jamie Langskov, Community and change management strategist.
Naturally, this leaves us asking:
Where do communities fit in the perception of developers?
Why are developers joining communities?
How are developer-facing professionals address developers’ community needs?
We don’t have to guess these answers. We just need to look at the data Jamie is referring to. These data come from 2 surveys run by SlashData: the Developer Nation survey (developer-focused) and the Developer Program Leaders survey (DevRel-focused). Let’s look together at the insights these bring us.
Where do communities fit in the perception of developers?
Developers join communities to learn. According to the Q3 2022 Developer Nation survey, which surveyed 23,790+ developers, 19% of developers rank community in the top 5 resources that companies should offer to support developers. This makes the community 7th most important resource overall, just ahead of answers in public forums and only slightly behind professional certifications.
Student developers’ professional aspirations
Having understood what makes developers join a community, we look at what the “next generation of developers” aka developers who are currently identifying as “students” look forward to.
When asked about their top career aspirations, student developers (sample size of 4,790+) listed these as their top 3 aspirations:
Solve problems
Become an expert in a domain or technology
Build innovative products/services
You can see their full responses in the graph below. What the answers to this question show is how the community can be the place where student developers’ needs are getting addressed. The community can provide the space, the resources and the interactions that can help student developers meet with their top aspirations: solve problems and gain expertise in a domain or technology.
Are organisations paying attention to developers’ community needs?
Yes, they are. And we will data-back this affirmation by looking at the data from the latest Developer Program Leaders survey, where we surveyed ~130 industry professionals in developer-facing roles. The data speaks for itself. Communities are now sharing the spotlight with other traditional popular methods of developer education. And developer-facing organisations are aware.
According to their responses, when the professionals are setting their strategy on how to talk to developers and address their technical audience needs, 73% consider community as (at least) a key part of their strategy. More specifically
34% consider community as the most important part of their strategy
39% consider community as a key part of their strategy
Only 6% do not include the community in their strategy.
You can see all responses at this graph:
What are developer program leaders’ roles?
By now we have established the importance of community in a developer marketing strategy. To better understand how this strategy is implemented, we will look at the hats these developer program professionals are wearing to implement this strategy and we will also look at the community sizes – for perspective.
With 73% of those professionals reporting community as a key part of their strategy, it comes as no surprise that 34% of them have “Community Manager” as their professional title, the second most popular, right behind “Developer Relations Practitioner” and only slightly above “Developer Marketing Practitioner”.
“I’ll have one ‘large community, please”
Communities come in different sizes. While everyone strives to build a space with a massive, always active user base, the reality sometimes shows differently. In fact, only 4% of the Developer Program Leaders reported running an active community that counts more than 10M members. 27% responded to running communities smaller than 100 members.
The less people are in a community, the more effort is needed to keep the discussion going. Which begs the question: how can you engage the community members?
Driving participation in the community
To answer this question, we don’t look at what community managers are doing to increase engagement in their communities. We ask developers what makes a community fun for them.
33% of developers (sample size 10,478) responded that having a well-designed community platform is their #1 reason that encourages them to participate. Four more reasons are tied for the second place, with 29% of respondents saying that what encourages them to be active are:
Getting regular updates
Fun activities
A well-defined purpose for the community
Projects on which community members can work together
The latter one is especially important for students.
Here is the full breakdown of their responses:
Developer community + DevRel strategy wrap up
In summary, looking at the latest data from our Developer Nation survey (developer-focused) and the Developer Program Leaders survey (DevRel-focused) we reach the following conclusions which we discussed in this hopefully-not-that-long article:
Developers rank community at their top-5 resources
Developers’ #1 reason for joining communities is training and resources
A community can be the means to address student developers’ top aspirations
Community is considered a key part of a developer-facing strategy by more than ⅔ of developer program leaders
Community management is the second most popular title
Communities come in all shapes, but even more sizes
Developers share what makes them engage in a community and are happy to share it.
How are you addressing your developer community? Join the discussions with like minded people at the DevRelX community. If you want more data on developer needs and wants or you are trying to better understand developers, SlashData has the insights you need.
Games are one of the most popular forms of entertainment and gamers demand high-performance and cutting-edge designs. Performance is also key to developers who work on creating games.
Considering the popularity of this entertainment niche, we take a look at how developers work on creating the games; more specifically: game engines. This article is based on “Game Engines and their use in Game Development” Developer Ecosystem Insights. In this report, we explore the state of game development and look at engines and the technologies developers use for creating video games.
The embrace of game engines
Around 42% of the developer population is involved in the games sector—either as a professional, student, or hobbyist. The developers have a wealth of technologies from which to choose, among which, game engines are the most prevalent.
47% of developers use 3D game engines; while 36% use 2D game engines.
Some of these developers use both 3D and 2D, leading to a total usage of 60% of the game developer population. As the name suggests, the difference between 2D and 3D games lies in the number of axes of motion available to the players. In 2D games, there is no perspective, fewer possible movements, and therefore, fewer interactions with other characters or objects in the game—resulting in these games being typically less complex than 3D games.
60% of game developers use game engines
As recently as 2017, our data showed that developers used 2D and 3D game engines equally, with 44% and 45% usage respectively. In subsequent years, however, the chasm between the two has widened — by 11 percentage points.
Overall, a similar percentage of developers are using game engines:
63% in Q2 2017, compared to 60% in Q1 2021.
However, far fewer developers are now only developing games with 2D engines, which is down 7 percentage points from Q2 2017. On the other end of the scale, sole usage of 3D game engines is up 5 percentage points. The large rise in 3D usage is due, in part, to the impact of VR gaming; as well as the dominance of smartphone and native desktop games which, when coupled with modern powerful hardware and larger screen sizes, encourage increases in game complexity. The platforms targeted by developers who use game engines will be explored further in chapter three.
Uneasy rests the head that wears the crown
Unity has the largest share of the game engine market: 38% of game developers who use game engines use Unity as their primary engine. The next most popular game engine, Unreal Engine, has 15% usage as a primary engine—much lower than Unity. Unity’s dominance is clear, but the gap between Unity and its competitors is closing. Overall usage of Unreal Engine—both as a primary and an ‘also using’ game engine—is currently at 43%.
In Q2 2017, it was at 20%. Unreal Engine’s focus on higher-end graphics and performance allows it to fill an important segment—their latest release of UE5 looks poised to continue this trend—but the engine is harder to use than Unity and is accessible on fewer platforms, somewhat restricting mass adoption. On the other hand, Unity remains king of the gaming market because it has succeeded in doing many things well: it is considered the best engine for mobile, excels in, and has a much larger and focussed tool-set for 2D games.49% of developers using Unity use Unreal Engine; while 76% of those using Unreal Engine find themselves using Unity.
Traditionally, Unity’s versatility has not been easily replicated, but developers are currently finding success in combining game engines to access the unique advantages of each. Typically, developers use more than one game engine: 64% of developers using game engines are using two or more, and 38% use three or more. Developers using offerings from vendors with a smaller market share tend to use multiple game engines at the same time. The smaller engines often lack all the capabilities of Unity and Unreal Engine, leading to game developers mixing engines to find their optimal usage combinations. These engines’ market share comes predominantly from their role as additional game engines. For example, Godot has a 20% usage as a game engine which developers are also using, but only a 5% usage as a primary game engine.
The reasons for the popularity of game engines are many, but one of them is the undeniable fact that game engines can shorten production time and costs. This makes this kind of technology more appealing than ever to a wide range of developers, ranging from amateurs to professionals, who are trying to gain a foothold in the industry.
What are your thoughts?
This data is just the tip of the iceberg or in gaming terms – a small tutorial or walkthrough. We have a lot more insights and data to share with you on games, including: where game developers work, how and where to reach them and even a forecast of their population for 2023. Access all data here
It’s the most wonderful time of the year! Yes, the beginning of the “Merry” season but also the time when new insights from the world of developers come to everyone’s house (magic may or may not be involved)!
Our 23rd Developer Nation global survey reached more than 26,000 developers in 160+ countries and its findings are bundled in a free “State of the Developer Nation” report.
This research report delves into key developer trends for Q3 2022:
The state of blockchain development
Students’ top career aspirations
Language communities – An update
Why developers contribute to vendor-owned open-source projects
Types of studios game developers work for
The rise and fall of web frameworks
In addition to outlining the report’s major findings, here are a few key takeaway points to spark your curiosity:
The state of blockchain development
25% of developers are currently working on or learning about blockchain applications other than cryptocurrencies.
Developers with 6-10 years of experience in software development are the most likely to be working on blockchain projects.
Though Ethereum is the dominant blockchain platform, it is the only one more popular among learners than those currently working on blockchain applications.
Language communities – An update
Javascript remains the largest programming language community, with an estimated 19.6M developers worldwide using it.
In the last two years, Java has almost doubled the size of its community, from 8.3M to 16.5M. For perspective, the global developer population grew about half as fast over the same period.
Kotlin and Rust are the two fastest-growing language communities, having more than doubled in size in the past two years.
The rise and fall of web frameworks
Web developers who use frameworks are more likely to be high-performers in software delivery than those who don’t.
Web developers are gradually settling for a smaller number of frameworks as they stop experimenting with a wide range of tools.
React is currently the most widely used client-side framework and its adoption has remained stable over the past two years. By comparison, jQuery’s popularity is decreasing rapidly.
As you’ll notice, most of the trends we discuss in this report are takeaways from how developers use technology. Our goal is to share these insights with the world to help guide the next generation of development.
