State of software engineering, JavaScript is the future, and more industry trends

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As part of my role as a senior product marketing manager at an enterprise software company with an open source development model, I publish a regular update about open source community, market, and industry trends for product marketers, managers, and other influencers. Here are five of my and their favorite articles from that update.

State of Software Engineering in 2020

Software is moving fast, and it is fusing into all other areas of industry. As it is a growing field, learning to program and improving your skills in software engineering can have get you great returns in the future. Moreover, identifying the fastest growing areas of software and investing your time into them can get you to even better places. Keep learning and try to find opportunities that you can capitalize on or products that can serve a niche in a growing field of software. When that niche becomes mainstream, you can end up with a successful product in your hands, which can become your future success. If it fails, it will be an immense experience on the path to becoming a product person.

The impact: Learn COBOL, see the world!

Why JavaScript is the programming language of the future

JavaScript has one of the most mature – if not THE most mature – ecosystems a programming language could ever have. The community for JavaScript is vast, and the entry barrier is extremely low.

The impact: The only knowledge I have of the veracity of this statement comes from the JavaScript people I follow on Twitter. If you can indeed extrapolate from them, then JavaScript has a pretty good shot.

Why Linux containers are a CIO's best friend

"A big take-away for CIOs is that fit enterprises increasingly view IT as a point of leverage for the business. Having a clear and consistent overall business strategy ranks as one of the most distinctive traits of fit enterprises," said Gartner VP and Distinguished Analyst Andy Roswell-Jones, in Gartner's report on the survey. "In such organizations, digital technology will drive that strategy."

The impact: Point of leverage meaning that if the IT an organization is selected in reference to and in support of that organization's overall strategy there will be an outsized lift on execution against that strategy. The corollary is that without a clear and consistent business strategy no technology can save your enterprise.

I hope you enjoyed this list and come back next week for more open source community, market, and industry trends.

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Tim Hildred stands with arms crossed.
I'm Tim. I like to write about how technology affects people, and vice versa. I’m constantly engaging with the news, tech, and culture with an eye to building the best possible sci-fi future.

8 Comments

the author has it wrong! Sure javascript has mind share; javascript is the microsoft of programming languages... backwardly compatible forever. And that's just the problem. And while it's interesting that apps like the Atom editor are possible it is non-trivial to implement and not everyone needs to implement that kinda system. What is more interesting are other language syntax... like Lua, tcl or even lisp. These languages can be implemented and extended as any DSL but with a head start. Hardware is still getting faster and these tools do just fine. "work" as a hardware problem!!!

"the microsoft of programming languages" seems like a big call. What does that even mean?

In reply to by richardb (not verified)

Thanks for share

If JavaScript is the future, as per the author's article, then software engineering is doomed.

Respectfully, you can't base your opinion on social media postings.

I quiet often am tasked with converting JS code to Python scripts in my organization. So if disagree with this article.

I've been writing these posts for at least a year now, and the most engagement I ever got was from people who aren't feeling JavaScript. What should I take from that?

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