Hello everyone and welcome back to the Cognixia podcast. Every week, we get together to talk about the latest happenings, bust some myths, discuss new concepts, and a lot more from the world of emerging digital technologies. From cloud computing to DevOps, containers to ChatGPT, and Project management to IT service management, we cover a little bit of everything weekly to inspire our listeners to learn something new, sharpen their skills, and move ahead in their careers.
In today’s episode, we talk about the recently released “The State of Developer Ecosystem 2023” Report by JetBrains. This report is a culmination of insights gathered from 26,348 developers from all around the globe. The world of developers is vast and diverse, making it an endlessly fascinating realm for exploration & learning. Through yearly research initiatives like this one, our goal is to explore this captivating world, uncover valuable insights about developers and their craft, and then share these facts with the community. The State of the Developer Ecosystem Report analyzes and presents valuable insights on a wide range of topics from programming languages, tools, and technologies to demographics and fun facts. It also digs deeper into the lifestyle of developers, showcasing the current passions and hobbies among developers. The 2023 State of Developers Report also includes insights on artificial intelligence, a category that has been newly introduced to the Report. The Report showcases the features of AI that developers are commonly using, the challenges they face, and some insights into how the situation is around the adoption of AI-enhanced tools.
Now, this begs the question of who is doing the research for this and how is the research done. Well, the State of the Developer Ecosystem Report is a report brought out by JetBrains. JetBrains is a company that aims to make professional software development a more productive and enjoyable experience. JetBrains helps developers work faster by automating common, repetitive tasks to enable them to stay focused on code design & the big picture. For this, they provide tools to explore and familiarize with code bases faster. JetBrains’ products are designed to help developers take care of quality during all stages of development and spend less time on maintenance tasks.
For this survey, responses from over 35,000 individuals were recorded for the Developer Ecosystem Survey 2023. The data was then cleaned up to ensure it was thorough and representative of the global scenario, with the final data containing responses from 26,348 individuals from 196 countries and regions. Interestingly, the survey even has a response from Antarctica. Now, how cool is that!
Now, we went through this report and found some fascinating insights in it. For instance, this JetBrains survey finds that the number of organizations where more than half the QA professionals do only manual testing is only about 27%. By extension, this indicates that if you are a test engineer or aspiring to be one, learning coding might bode well for you. Leveraging code and automation to multiply test coverage is becoming increasingly important and indispensable. JavaScript, Python, and Java remain the most popular languages among the surveyed professionals.
If you look at the results from the 2022 survey, you will find that Postman was the most popular testing tool used by professionals. This year, things have changed a bit. This year, Junit has surpassed Postman in popularity, with about 33% of the respondents reporting using the tool. Now, the interesting thing here is that the Postman tool is generally used for testing the APIs. In contrast, Junit is generally used for unit testing, it is more for the business side of things. Does it mean that the focus of automation has shifted away from the API and user interfaces? Well, not really. The JetBrains survey also goes on to find that about 84% of the respondents report APIs to be the top target for automation. The second priority was UIs. Desktop automation stands third on the list. So, as you see, testing itself is up – in the case of both automated testing as well as unit testing. The 2023 survey also reveals that web applications are making the bulk of testing targets.
Another very interesting picture painted by the JetBrains survey is of how engaged and curious Java developers are. They are inclined to learn new languages, they have active practical learning preferences, and they have thorough engagement with professional content platforms, which collectively showcases that the community immensely values growth, innovation, and collaboration.
As we are focusing on the QA testing part of the survey in this episode, one glaring gap we find in the report on this front is in the test management tools being used. Close to half of the respondents have reported that test case design is a part of their QA process. The most popular technique for test case design is based on use cases while based on user stories comes second. 41% of the respondents use Microsoft Office tools to store their test cases instead of specialized test case tools. About 34% of respondents do not use any specific tools for test management at all. But among those who do use some test management tools, TestRail tops the charts, followed by Azure, and then Xray for Jira.
This also made us wonder how much testing is being outsourced by organizations considering how commonly a lot of functions get outsourced these days. Well, here, we have a surprise for you we were quite surprised. The JetBrains survey reports that about 96% of the testing is done in-house. Now, coming to think of it, this metric is super encouraging if you are considering taking the plunge into building a career in software testing, no?
Now, we have only discussed the findings in the software testing space from the State of the Developer Ecosystem Report in this episode. However, there are many other areas covered in the report, such as artificial intelligence, Big Data, databases, data sciences, remote development, C, C#, C++, Go, Kotlin, Java, JavaScript, PHP, R, Python, etc. in the Report. We would highly encourage everyone whether currently working in the tech space or aspiring to work in the space to check the report out. The report is open to the public and its contents can be used and shared so far as you attribute and credit the source appropriately. It is a really amazing report and we would go so far as to say that it is a must-read. You absolutely must check it out, we are sure you will find it useful.
Meanwhile, if you are looking to sharpen your skills or learn a new skill, visit our website – www.cognixia.com and check out our complete range of live online instructor-led globally recognized straining & certification courses We have some special year-end promotions too, so don’t miss it out!
With that, we come to the end of this week’s episode of the Cognixia podcast. We will be back next week with another interesting and exciting episode of the podcast.
Until next week then, happy learning!
