Shiny, Happy Customers Close your eyes and imagine your ideal customers. Are they all the same? Are they all working on the same projects, developing the same code, and facing the same challenges and frustrations? Chances are the only thing your ideal customers have in common is that (in your mind) they need your product. The reality is that not everyone needs your product. It’s best to concentrate on those that have the need and those that have the need, but don’t know it. To bring these high-potential candidate customers into focus, you have to exploit their similarities and differences. [...]

The Year The Earth Stood Still When COVID-19 hit in 2020, it would be an understatement to say the world was caught off guard. Every aspect of our lives has been affected by the pandemic — especially how we work and conduct business. In general, many of the major impacts of COVID are related to isolation and social distancing, especially in the work environment. Many industries, including tech companies and higher education, quickly adjusted to the conditions enforced by the pandemic. However, isolation created social interaction challenges even where adaptation was successful. Software development is a unique profession in that [...]

The View from 30,000 Feet Working in the cloud offers unique challenges to developers and unique opportunities for software tool vendors looking to address this market. What was a new frontier has quickly become an accepted and established market as more apps, programs, developers and businesses have migrated to internet-based cloud computing. Working in the cloud involves thoughtful development and management to ensure that the cloud user is maximizing efficiency and resources. What Developers Want According to the DeveloperMedia User Survey, independently conducted by Evans Data Corporation, developers are highly influential in the decision-making process on which tools to use [...]

What Are the Odds… …that anyone under the age of 60 will answer a call from an unknown caller? With that in mind, before we delve into specifically contacting a developer, let’s face facts: Based on a study done by Hiya in 2020, only 6% of calls from unidentified callers are answered, primarily because of robocalls and scam callers. Analyze your own behavior —  do you answer calls from unknown callers? The same study found that despite widespread fraud and robocalls, people still prefer voice calling over other methods of communication, including texts and email. Most unknown calls go to [...]

Newsletters remain one of the best means of communicating with your developer audience.  They should be an integral part of your communications campaign, along with email, blogs, and offers. Newsletters are trusted by developers who opt-in, and they opt-in because they enjoy the content you provide. With so much potential, newsletters should be an area where you devote a significant number of resources to ensure quality and relevance. Take Me To Your Reader Newsletters are a significant commitment in that they must be maintained as an ongoing effort. They should be planned in advance using an editorial calendar. Support will [...]

Overview DevOps has become a force in business and the development community because it’s designed to break down silos in a business enterprise between developers, functional business groups, and IT. Designed to counteract “throw it over the wall’ handoffs between groups, DevOps is a bridge meant to increase efficiency and create a robust Systems Development Life Cycle (SDLC) strategy. DevOps has specific segments designed to address lifecycle management, and from this structure, specific tools have been developed to facilitate development efforts. DevOps Methodology and Tools DevOps is designed to be a continuous process, allowing iterative improvements throughout; a key to [...]

Near Term Predictions of a cyborg-infested world in the near future are probably overblown. While humans have made great strides in using technology to solve medical conditions due to disease or damage, we haven’t quite reached the stage where silicon-based implants are readily available to enhance physical or mental performance in a fully-functioning developer. As of this writing, there aren’t enough silicon chips to keep up with automobile production due to supply chain issues caused by COVID! While not widely available, cyborg technology is steadily advancing in research labs and is reaching limited commercialization. Technology aside, what will the profession [...]

The writing is on the wall when it comes to emerging technologies, according to a recent State of the Developer Nation survey published by SlashData™; DevOps is now mainstream, and Blockchain applications are not far behind. In this annual survey, the correlation between developer interest and technology is measured by engagement change between survey periods. As interest in a technology increases, more resources are added to commercially develop a technology—including the resources of the developer community. Emerging Leaders Table 1 below presents the SlashData™ survey data in an easy-to-understand matrix. In the upper left are technologies which have high interest [...]