What impressed the developer community in 2024? – To answer this question, the editorial team of iX Developer evaluated the reach numbers of news from the year ended and compiled the most popular ones. The topics of developer satisfaction (4 articles), AI in work environments (5 articles) and security (4 articles), often combined, were clearly at the center of interest.
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In conclusion, it can be said that AI will have a strong impact on the working environment in developer teams in 2024. Almost everyone uses it, but the initial enthusiasm wears off and a fundamental distrust of the code generated remains. Whether code quality increases or decreases as a result of helpers is controversial. This also applies to the question of how AI affects the working environment and job opportunities. Will developers become redundant or will AI simply increase output? Looking back, the definitive answer will emerge only in a few years.
However, it is clear that the pressure on teams is increasing, especially with regard to increasing security requirements. This is a problem for many people, and salaries do not necessarily provide the desired balance – even more so in open source environments, where a lot of volunteers still work.
In the security area, there was an increase in attacks on repositories and supply chains, which were often very complex.
Instead of the usual top 10, we decided to include candidate 11 because he is almost equivalent to number 10 and makes a significant contribution to the topics of AI and the working environment for developers. We provide two values as benchmarks: the percentage of times a message was viewed compared to the average of the top 100 news stories and the number of comments (as of December 16).
Position 11: The future lies in small development teams with highly productive senior developers
(Image: Tero Vesalainen/Shutterstock.com)
The study evaluated developers’ commitments between 2020 and 2024 and, based on this, put forward a series of theses for the future. Intelligent code generators in particular will transform the working environment. One theory is that teams will shrink and favor senior developers. With modern language models, developers can implement big ideas with relatively few commitments. This increase in productivity from highly qualified members will help ensure that small teams of five or fewer people are adequate for product development. However, both commenters on the forum and the authors of the study themselves expressed skepticism about the methodology chosen.
One of our bloggers also takes the opposite view: He takes into account more factors in his views than just associating AI with labor. Accordingly, AI does not lead to more unemployed developers, but rather to more software production.
- date: 10 August 2024
- notes: 69
10th place: Highly acclaimed AI promotes Devin code writer to software engineer
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In some sensational YouTube videos, startup Cognition promises that AI Devin will not only write blocks of code, but complete entire software projects. Devin receives only brief instructions on films and works independently until the completed work is published. Devin is also adept at troubleshooting. The company says that despite the $21 million investment, the project has been very quiet since the spring. Looks like Devin is home alone.
- date: 13 March 2024
- notes: 92
Ninth place: Software security: developers are drowning in technical debt
A protected laptop.
(Image: Image created with AI in Bing Designer by heise online/dmk)
70 percent of software companies suffer from security vulnerabilities in their products, while technical debt is increasing and tying up more and more team capacity. This affects the mood of the teams. It is often dependent packages that cause problems, which increase as the structure becomes more complex. One recommendation of the report is to focus on about three percent of all gaps that pose serious risks. Prioritizing secure software and team member well-being is important.
- date: 12 August 2024
- notes: 88
Eighth place: What nonsense! – an interim solution to date – has remained in the form of Windows dialogs for over thirty years
(Image: Antonio Guillem/Shutterstock)
A well-known Windows dialog has remained unchanged for almost thirty years – to format a data storage medium. The purpose of the dialog was only to be a quick interim solution on the way from Windows 95 to NT. Former Microsoft developer Dave Plummer reports roughly the same order in which users make related formatting decisions. Plummer thought, “It wasn’t pretty, but it would suffice until pretty user interfaces came along.” Only: the beautiful UI never came, and the same structure from that time can still be found in Windows today.
- date: 28 March 2024
- notes: 196
Seventh place: Now the AI hype is reaching its limit
(Image: memoryman/Shutterstock.com)
After every rush there comes a hangover – as was the case with the GenAI rush initiated by OpenAI and Copilot. After the initial enthusiasm, the first doubts arise in the public: Does AI also write good, readable code that benefits not only the author, but also subsequent reviewers? Furthermore, the unpleasant side of distribution battles over new business became increasingly apparent in the industry. Users are given a hard time with AI, whether they want it or not – with a CoPilot button that is unnecessary for many users or a forced plugin in the IDE – just like ETA Hoffman: “O Appetite – your The name is Hangover.”
There are now studies on the question of code quality, which, on the contrary, also report improvements in quality through AI assistants.
- date: 5 February 2024
- notes: 12
Sixth place: falling incomes and rising demands
(Image: Dicky Prayago/Shutterstock.com)
A large study of 65,000 developers by StackOverflow showed that their average annual income dropped by nearly ten thousand US dollars. Top salaries in Germany are up to $82,000, and in the United States they are up to $225,000. The main frustrating factor for 62.4 percent of those surveyed is technical debt.
There has also been some change with regard to artificial intelligence compared to last year: Enthusiasm for AI solutions dropped from 77 to 72 percent, possibly as a result of expectations not being met. At the same time, the use of AI tools in projects has increased from 70 to 76 percent.
- date: 27 July 2024
- notes: 173
5th place: Millions of Docker Hub repositories infected with malware or phishing
Vulnerabilities put devices at risk.
(Image: Image created with AI in Bing Designer by heise online/dmk)
A major uncertain trend in 2024 were targeted attacks on public Git repositories, as Trojans injected here spread on their own, something that had been planned for years would remain in the memory. In another case, security experts found 2.8 million malicious Docker Hub repositories, representing 19 percent of all repos out there. These were image-less directories that contained only metadata, typically descriptions containing phishing or malware links. Hackers took advantage of the fact that Docker checks images for malicious code, but not metadata. The effort behind the campaigns was huge as all the infected pages were slightly different and were set up by different users. This suggests that criminals have high potential expectations.
In a later interview, we talked to Sharchar Menashe, senior director at JFrog, about how secure repositories and software deployments are now.
- date: 2 May 2024
- notes: 23
Fourth place: Refrigerator manufacturer wanted to delete open source project: This is not a good idea!
(Image: Digital Genetics/Shutterstock.com)
There was a lot of excitement around home appliance maker Haier, which also owns the Kandy and Whirlpool brands. Haier wanted to force an open source developer to take an offline plug-in for the home assistant. With this extension for smart home systems, devices can be integrated into the home network and controlled automatically. Haier found a violation of its terms of service. According to international media reports, the manufacturer eventually contacted the developer and suggested optimizing the plug-in together.
Edifier M60 speaker, the product that renews the desktop- date: 23 January 2024
- notes: 157
