Slashdot Mirror
Are There More Developers Than We Think? (redmonk.com)
JavaScript's npm package manager reports 4 million users, doubling every year, leading to an interesting question from tech industry analyst James Governor:
Just how many developers are there out there? GitHub is very well placed to know, given it's where (so much) of that development happens today. It has telemetry-based numbers, with their own skew of course, but based on usage rather than surveys or estimates. According to GitHub CEO Chris Wanstrath, "We see 20 million professional devs in the world as an estimate, from research companies. Well we have 21 million [active] users -- we can't have more users than the entire industry"...
If Github has 21 million active users, Wanstrath is right that current estimates of the size of the developer population must be far too low... Are we under-counting China, for example, given its firewalls? India continues to crank out developers at an astonishing rate. Meanwhile Africa is set for crazy growth too... You certainly can't just count computer science graduates or software industry employees anymore. These days you can't even be an astronomer without learning code, and that's going to be true of all scientific disciplines.
The analyst attributes the increasing number of developers to "the availability, accessibility and affordability of tools and learning," adding "It's pretty amazing to think that GitHub hit 5 million users in 2012, and is now at 20 million." As for the total number of all developers, he offers his own estimate at the end of the essay. "My wild assed guess would be more like 35 million."
If Github has 21 million active users, Wanstrath is right that current estimates of the size of the developer population must be far too low... Are we under-counting China, for example, given its firewalls? India continues to crank out developers at an astonishing rate. Meanwhile Africa is set for crazy growth too... You certainly can't just count computer science graduates or software industry employees anymore. These days you can't even be an astronomer without learning code, and that's going to be true of all scientific disciplines.
The analyst attributes the increasing number of developers to "the availability, accessibility and affordability of tools and learning," adding "It's pretty amazing to think that GitHub hit 5 million users in 2012, and is now at 20 million." As for the total number of all developers, he offers his own estimate at the end of the essay. "My wild assed guess would be more like 35 million."
only if you call all js-monkeys as developers
If I doodle am I an artist?
If I put air in my tires am I a mechanic?
If I floss an I a dentist?
If I buy plants am I a horticulturist?
It seems if merely downloading some code makes one a developer... we have a serious respectability problem as a profession.
Cwm, fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz
There is a typical logical disconnect in this summary. A lot of GitHub accounts are for students and people who are just hobbyists. Therefore a GitHub account doesn't equate to a professional developer. Also, multiple GitHub accounts per person is not abnormal.
The researchers indicate that there are 20 million professional developers. In other words, not including students and hobbyists.
Therefore the GitHub CEO is a moron, or his statement is out of context or is mis-quoted. Or the submitter/story writer is just making stuff up.
20 million professional developers globally seems a reasonable estimate. Somewhere above 40 million people globally who code regularly is not unrealistic.
> we can't have more users than the entire industry
Sure you can. I personally have 3 different github accounts created with different email addresses. You?
And certainly not all users are coders (depending on quite how you term "developer")
Yes, I am a developer, but amongst the activities I use GitHub for, I host a website. Not all of the contributors (who have user accounts and have submitted pull requests), are developers.
What about people just uploading data sets to GitHub for sharing?
What about people that contribute just to the artwork or documentation of a project (where those files are in GitHub)?
What about users who have an account solely to open issues in the issue tracker? Or contribute to wikis?
And then there are students, or even just hobbyist coders, never in the industry but just doing it for fun?
Saying that you can't have more users than the industry is pretty dumb, and suggests that the CEO doesn't understand his own product.
How do they define "active" users? I have a GitHub account but rarely use it, mostly for some open coursework machine learning examples / tests and Kaggle now and then. I am a professional developer though. I wonder how many GitHub account are just plain students setting one up because they need to for some course, but aren't developers.