Developers are often told they need to check out what other people are learning in their sector, whether that be a popular language like Python, or a popular framework like Angular. According to a sneak peek at Packt’s annual Skill Up survey, developers and engineers in various jobs plan on learning several new tools and technologies over the next 12 months.
Skill Up went “even deeper than previous years,” according to software developer expert and communications manager for Packt, Richard Gall, asking developers to share their opinions on everything from equality in tech to career development at work. The goal of this survey is to keep both developers and tech professionals relevant so they can “gain a competitive edge in their careers by understanding what upcoming trends they are interested in, and how they prefer to learn,” said Gall.
While everyone learns differently, Gall said the Packt survey revealed that 18-34 year olds are big Stack Overflow fans, while the 45 and over age bracket prefer to read as a way to learn new sectors of tech.
Packt also found that Python is by far the most popular tool being used by developers and tech pros today, followed by Git and Visual Studio. Tech support, security engineers, QA/testers, product owners, mobile developers, non-developers, mid-level leads or managers, hobbyists (and more) said that they plan on learning Python for their current role.
Python may have slithered into the top tool for all kinds of tech pros, it was last year’s survey that showed JavaScript as the number one programming language, but now it shows up at 11th place under Packt’s “Top 30 tools currently being used” section of the survey.
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Besides Python, developers are focused on exploring Docker, Angular, Visual Studio, and Jenkins. Python is currently number one at the moment, said Gall, but Docker and Angular are hot on its tail. Right now, Angular isn’t on Packt’s top 30 tools being used right now, but JavaScript is at number 11, so Gall thinks some developer may have grouped Angular under it. Docker comes in at number nine, so 2017 to 2018 may be the year of Docker and Angular.
What does all of this mean for the industry? According to Gall, as the cloud and data centers continue to grow and grab the attention of enterprises, so will Docker, for instance.
“Many businesses are moving their server applications from VM to containers, and it seems this trend will continue if more and more tech pros plan on learning Docker,” said Gall. As for Angular, one of the big reasons it’s growing in popularity is because of its ability to create dynamic web pages.
“Over the last few years, frameworks have become a vital part of web development, as they offer numerous advantages such as speeding up the workflow, better productivity without sacrificing quality, faster development, consistent performance and much more,” said Gall. “Angular extends the functionalities of HTML and offers an ecosystem that is comprehensive and feature rich, an essential in modern web dev.”
The entire survey and results from developers and engineers is expected to go live mid-July, according to the Packt team.