Being a dev in the 2020s
Tags: webdev, programming, developers
Published: 2023-10-18 08:50:19

So much has changed in the past 20 years since the year 2000 and we are still at the beginning of the 21st century😀

In the early 2000s, if you told anyone you were a software developer, they'd probably call you a hacker😄. In those times, building websites wasn't as easy as clicking a few buttons when you wanted to deploy your code to production. You had to have access to a physical server. They mainly were rented or managed by the company deploying the website. Deploying a website would typically involve using file transfer protocols(FTP) to transfer files from the local computer to remote servers. Devs were using FTP clients to upload their files. Landing pages were relatively static and there weren't many interactive websites.

In the 2010s, things were already evolving. The iPhone had already been part of the market for over 3 years and they are browsers that are now available on mobile phones like Samsung and Nokia.

This meant that we needed media queries to start displaying websites on mobile devices. There was advancement in CSS, and devs started to use Flexbox, grids, etc.

People started to build startups and there was a lot of success like Facebook and 2go. Devs had to advance their skills in CSS, HTML and Javascript. Backend development gained so much recognition, especially using Node js and PHP. A market for cloud computing services started to emerge because the demand for mobile development, websites and hosting services grew exponentially. Node js and AWS were already released at this point.

At this point, if you were a frontend developer, you probably knew HTML, CSS, Javascript/Python, WordPress or PHP. For a backend dev, you are probably focused on languages like Javascript (Node js), PHP(Laravel), and C#. Most times backend devs used SQL databases, but relational databases also started to gain popularity amongst devs. Mobile devs were mostly Java devs while system programming was mostly C and C++ (which is still relevant today).

In the mid-2010s, Frameworks like React, and Vue started to change the standard of websites. Users could literally interact with a single page and not be directed to another page. APIs and API testers started to have a place in development, like Postman. You can't be a backend dev without using any API platform. There are many hosting platforms for websites, like Netlify, Vercel and GitHub pages.

Now, we are in the 2020s and a lot has changed. People are either using an iPhone 11 or a Samsung Galaxy phone or at least any mobile phone. There are so many CSS frameworks and devs use React or Vue for almost any front-end project. Backend devs use ORMs these days for querying databases. There are more opportunities in development like Cloud Engineers and DevOps. React Native and Flutter have shaped the standard of mobile apps and you can easily deploy test environments using Expo.

There are so many social platforms and some are compulsory for developers. You do need to be able to fork someone's code.

Web3 space is now here. We've seen Bitcoin, Ethereum, Polkadot, Solana and Phala launched. To be a web3 dev you either have to choose a project and stick with it or like many devs do, learn Solidity and Rust. Reading whitepapers is an essential ritual when onboarding into any web3 project.

AI has now taken its place in the development. It has helped improve the speed at which we get accurate information on the internet. So much knowledge out there that can be easily accessed with a few clicks.

You also need to know how to toot your horn on Twitter as companies are now using Twitter as a point of contact in their recruiting process.

You definitely need to have some knowledge of database systems and sometimes provide some tolerance for maths when you're working with ZK proofs🤓

If you don't have knowledge of Git, are you really a dev in 2023?😄

There's a lot more to being a dev in 2023. There are so many perks apart from remote work, some companies have their quirks and there are irks to being a developer in these times.