In the era of digital transformation, developers exercise significant autonomy and influence over enterprise purchasing decisions, according to the IDC’s PaaSView and the Developer 2019 report, released Tuesday. These professionals should have a seat at the table when it comes to IT purchasing and procurement in any organization moving to the cloud and undergoing digital initiatives, the report noted.

“The autonomy and influence enjoyed by developers today is illustrative of the changing role of developers in enterprise IT in an era of rapidly intensifying digital transformation,” Arnal Dayaratna, research director of software development at IDC, said in a press release. “Developers are increasingly regarded as visionaries and architects of digital transformation as opposed to executors of a pre-defined plan delivered by centralized IT leadership.”

SEE: How to build a successful developer career (free PDF) (TechRepublic)

The report surveyed 2,500 developers globally, and found that the current landscape of software development languages and frameworks remains “highly fragmented,” creating a number of challenges for developer teams that will likely bleed into the future support of applications.

Programming languages that support a variety of use cases and deployment environments—such as Python and Java—will likely continue gaining support among developers, as well as those that have specializations that differentiate themselves from others, such as JavaScript.

DevOps practices have also moved from concept to reality, as 67% of organizations surveyed said they have adopted DevOps in some way.

“Developer interest in DevOps reflects a broader interest in transparency and collaboration that illustrates the trend in software development to not only use open source technologies, but also to integrate open source practices into software development,” Al Gillen, group vice president of software development and open source at IDC, said in the release. “Developers prioritize decentralized collaboration and code contributions as well as transparent documentation of the reasoning for code-related decisions.”

Developers are increasingly taking part in cloud, container, and low-code tools as well, the report found. Some 20% of developers said they are “extremely familiar” with containers and microservices, while 44% said they have used low-code development tools at some point in their professional life.

For more, check out How to become a developer: A cheat sheet on TechRepublic.

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