01 March 2016

2005 Plant Sciences • 11:00AM - 12:00PM

Introductory Meeting, 2016 Survey Results

The first meeting of the new Application Developer's SIG on the UCD campus. It featured a first-look at the 2016 UCD Application Developer's Survey.

Below are compiled notes of the meeting:

Introduction & Purpose

Christopher Thielen began presentation:

  • Welcome.
  • Related personal experience as a developer starting in 2005: no developer on-boarding, poor community access due to non-technical individuals performing hiring in an isolated environment, belief that the experience is shared even if details are different. Conclusion: we need a community.

  • Mission statement:

    The UC Davis Application Developer’s SIG provides a regular space and communication channel for campus developers to come together and learn new technologies, new techniques, understand software trends, and encourage collaboration. Our goal is to increase developer engagement, offer training opportunities, and improve overall software quality.

  • UCD is federated by design: need a civic-style approach. Multi-pronged: these meetings (technology- and project-presentation focused), Slack channel, mailing list, developers.ucdavis.edu.
  • developers.ucdavis.edu is a one-stop shop for developer resources at UCD. Not authoritative but links to IET, etc. resources. Think Wikipedia.

2016 Application Developer Survey

Scott Kirkland presented the survey results. Takeaways:

  • 152 responses, 80% consider app dev their main job.
  • Teams:
    • Teams are between 2-8 people
    • Projects have 1-3 developers, 1/3 of projects have a single programmer
    • Teams manage more than 6 applications
      • Most people work on more than one project at a time
      • Few developers work with designers
  • Environment - Languages:
    • JavaScript is huge – used by >80% of respondents
    • Java, PHP, C# and Python are very popular
    • ColdFusion is popular both for active development & is the #1 “maintenance” language
    • R is also used widely (probably underrepresented in our survey)
    • Oracle/MySQL/MS SQL are massively popular compared to NoSQL
  • Git is Massively Popular
    • Every respondent uses either GitHub or Bitbucket (in about equal numbers)
    • Git is also used in other ways, including GitLab and native
    • SVN used by about 20% (leading tech after Git)
  • Front-End Development
    • jQuery centric front-end dev is very popular
    • Frameworks like Angular/React/Backbone are also in similar numbers
    • Only 16% of respondents aren’t developing dynamic font-end apps
  • Security & Cloud
    • Cloud has large interest but not much usage
    • Low use of security scanners (AppScan, etc.)
    • Automated testing not widely used but frameworks are diverse
  • App Dev Difficulties
    • Not a lot of cross-work with other departments
    • Poor sense of connectedness to other developers
    • Information silos
    • Lack of communication with developers and clients • Many development roadblocks (often bureaucratic)
  • App Dev “Pluses”
    • Flexibility and control of development process (including tools)
    • Interesting/unique problems
    • Important common educational goals
    • Common interest in better communication and collaboration

Open Discussion

Group discussed documentation problems as well as the desire for an “api.ucdavis.edu”.

swagger.io was mentioned as a popular API protocol.

Note about security for developers.ucdavis.edu if it is to include useful but possibly sensitive information such as Banner queries. Group discussed the possible security issues in a simple CAS-only requirement for accessing developers.ucdavis.edu; not everyone with a CAS account is a ‘good’ actor due to compromised accounts or old accounts kept alive due to e-mail forwarding. Discussions revolved around whether or not a whitelist on top of the CAS requirement would be appropriate.

Group was encouraged to join ucdavis.slack.com #appdev. Free.

Meetings may be moved to second or fourth Tuesday to avoid conflicts.

Application Security SIG attendance also encouraged. Contact Jevan Grey (jevan (at) ucd …).

Next meeting announced to include presentation about Docker.

Miscellaneous

There were 23 individuals in attendance.

A list was taken: Christopher Thielen, Scott Kirkland, Matthew Favetti, Erik Olson, Matt Sidor, Mark Johnston, Rob Martinsen, Eli Richmond, Georg C Kaiser, Kevin Murakoshi, John Knoll, Quico Gonzalez, Steve Pigg, Jason Aller, Craig Lowe, Nicholas Ilacqua, Jason Sylvestre, Ian Fleet, Brian Mendonca, James Cubbage, Matthew Steinwachs, Josh Eilers, Ken Taylor

Presenters

Recent Meetings