At ActiveState, we recently put on a Webinar to present the Top 5 Trends in Open Source Languages as well as our predictions to capitalize or address each trend. They were:
TREND #1: Polyglot is the enterprise norm.
- PREDICTION: Polyglot practices drive enterprise IT.
TREND #2: Security practices are top of mind for developers.
- PREDICTION: Shift-left starts with languages.
TREND #3: Open Source Language Ecosystem Complexity.
- PREDICTION: DevOps will merge with the build engineering of Open Source Languages.
TREND #4: Innovation Built with Open Source.
- PREDICTION: Division between community and company will blur.
TREND #5: Developer Velocity is Competitive Driver
- PREDICTION: Open Source Language Automation
What follows is a summary of each of the 5 Trends and their Predictions. If you want to hear the entire discussion please download the webinar here.
TREND #1: Polyglot is the enterprise norm.
The power shift to developers creates language/tech stack variants. Your tech debt grows over time, new languages evolve, your dependencies, complexities and polyglot challenges grow.
- PREDICTION: Polyglot practices drive enterprise IT. Our ActiveState 2018 Developer Survey reported 67% of respondents wouldn’t add a language because of the associated hassles. Systems that facilitate polyglot environments will be developed.
TREND #2: Security practices are top of mind for developers.
The software supply chain has many attack points and open source vulnerabilities are growing. 96.8% of developers work with open source and the ActiveState 2018 Developer Survey found that 50% of respondents experienced some or a lot of problems with security.
- PREDICTION: Shift-left starts with languages. The movement to shift security left and is addressed before a software application is built will continue. This will accelerate the push to production, help developers and protect the enterprise.
TREND #3: Open Source Language Ecosystem Complexity.
Language builds take up a lot of time and are usually outside of a company’s core expertise. Our ActiveState Developer Survey reported 47% of respondents experienced some or a lot of problems with build stability.
- PREDICTION: DevOps will merge with the build engineering of Open Source Languages. Open source practices come to the forefront. Build engineering process will become automated, reproducible and continuous to produce continuous builds for DevOps.
TREND #4: Innovation Built with Open Source
Open source is at the core of corporate software development stacks. If you’re not doing open source you’ll need to stay relevant.
- PREDICTION: Division between community and company will blur. Companies will have dedicated resources for community contributions and will decrease friction to enable contributions. Security threats, hoaxes and vulnerabilities will become as important to community core contributors as they are to corporate entities.
TREND #5: Developer Velocity is Competitive Driver
Developers lose productivity managing, securing and administering open source languages. Loss in developer productivity impacts a company’s bottom-line.
- PREDICTION: Open Source Language Automation. It will increase developer productivity as an automated reproducible process. And free up developers to “write code, not readmes”.
Watch the Webinar to get additional information along with our Bonus prediction!
