Developer Productivity & Codiga
Tags: software, productivity, devops, codiga
Published: 2022-05-07 20:04:42

Tech is moving at a pace faster than ever. New technologies are emerging, methodologies and techniques are being pondered upon and altered in a way that facilitates and enables a product to be built and shipped faster. Considering the human factor in the whole journey of building a product to shipping it, a crucial concept known as **"Developer Productivity"** comes into play. 

Loosely speaking, Developer Productivity is the measure of an individual's or a team's ability to quickly and efficiently write high-quality code. Naturally, it largely affects the whole development process and is a key performance indicator used by DevOps teams across various industries. 

##Why Measure Developer Productivity?##
The reasons to measure the productivity of a developer or a whole team are somewhat obvious: it provides a much needed insight to organizations about how their engineering teams, on whom they spend a significant amount of their capital, are functioning, which in turn affects the functioning of the whole organization. Highly productive developers mean quick and efficient product development which eventually means better **RoI (Return on Investment)** for the organization.

A question that might arise here: _Why bother at all? Shouldn't we just hire more developers to get the job done faster?_

To answer this, let's take an example of the farming industry. Before the advent of the industrial revolution, a major part of the farmer's daily work was manual and hence more manpower meant faster work. As machines took over the industry, the work gradually got more and more automated and hence, less manpower was required for the same work. 

An industry in its initial stages, be it farming or software, requires a lot of workers to develop. But as it evolves, productivity gains outweigh the need for more workers. With a nearly 60 year old software industry arguably still in its infant stages, it is natural to think that hiring more developers will solve the problem, but eventually measuring and devising techniques and tools to increase developer productivity will be the way to go for better functioning of an organization. 

Various advances in this field have already been made, _low-code_ and _no-code_ products being an example of reducing friction in the process of developing software and increasing productivity. But eventually, tools are required in the hard-coded product domain as well, which still comprise a majority of development work today. 

That is where **Codiga** comes into play

##How does Codiga solve this?##


![Codiga Logo](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/j7i5rtl4j6kydp4xlega.jpeg)

With its two main features: **the Code Assistant** and the **Code Analysis** tool, Codiga helps developers write better code, faster in a simple yet effective manner. Let's briefly look at these features one by one.

####Codiga Code Assistant####
Codiga assists in the code-writing process by providing **Smart Code Snippets**, also called a _recipe_, which are blocks of reusable code that can be created, used and shared by developers around the world. What makes these code snippets "smart" is the fact that the Coding Assistant suggests code snippets based on the programming language, framework and file being used. It is non-AI based, meaning it does this not by storing the code, but by searching for relevant keywords in the query and matching it with the snippets available. 

Developers can create:
**private recipes**, which will be just for themselves and the groups they decide to share it to.
or **public recipes**, which are available for use to anyone around the world.

Through these smart code snippets, the task of writing clean, accurate, and efficient code at a faster pace becomes a very easy process. The Codiga plugin is available for integration with various platforms such as **VS Code**, **Jetbrains**, **Chrome**. 

{%embed https://youtu.be/wrMy6hQWCrs %}

{%embed https://youtu.be/ckOonbTykAc %}


####Automated Code Analysis Tool####
Apart from the snippets, Codiga also provides automated code reviews and analysis to check for violations, code smells etc. The issue of **technical debt**, which is a result of teams prioritizing speedy delivery over efficient coding, is a serious one and can prove to be very costly. Codiga addresses this issue head on through both of its features, with the snippets helping in writing better code faster and the Code Analysis tool also providing the feature of **Technical Debt Analysis**, which pinpoints all the areas of improvement.

{%embed https://youtu.be/Xx_Ptff_s2w %}

##In Conclusion##
The ability to write better code, faster, is the hallmark of a productive developer team and the inability to do so may very well prove to be a major roadblock in the development of any product. Tools such as Codiga successfully address this issue in a very simplified and integrated manner.

Get Codiga at https://www.codiga.io/