Evolving Ecosystem of Collaboration Platforms
Tags: collaboration, opensource, development
Published: 2019-08-09 09:17:24

Turning an idea into a fully-functional software or an application is the biggest dream for a technopreneur. Thanks to the wonders of technology which made it quite easier for us to pursue our ideas without much hustle.

Lately, there's been a lot of buzz about the utilities being offered by the developer platforms. Now, what do these platforms actually do? The developer platforms have made the overall software development process easier, collaborative and standardized. For instance, you have a great idea for a gaming application in your mind. After exhaustive brainstorming, your team comes up with a strategy to work on this project. The question arises, how exactly have you determined the "right approach"? Traditionally, no other game developer is going to come to your aid since everyone out there is your rival. Here's when open source developer platforms kick in.

These platforms have made the software developers realize that the information they have, is meant for sharing. By collaborating with each other, people will get to know things and will strive to beat each other by writing quality code which is free from functional errors. The developer platforms that I'm talking about are equipped with advanced development tools and frameworks which foster a potentially productive working environment.

**How Does a Developer Platform Work?**
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The main idea of a developer platform is, it acts as a huge repository for all project files. It also saves several versions of the codes which a fellow team member submits. The development teams either working on-site or remotely, can track the changes and the team leads can easily measure the progress of a contributing team member.

**Developer Platforms Help Maintaining Developers' Productivity:**
While working on a developer platform, you can manage a whole project remotely. You can assign different roles to different people based on their expertise and can track changes as well. Collaborative platforms are also being used by a huge number of Fortune-500 companies because these platforms are ensuring compliance with the quality standards which many programmers tend to ignore.

It doesn't stop here!

The collaboration platforms of today have evolved to a whole new level. Platforms like the Crowdsourcer.io, is setting new benchmarks for the already-present developer platforms. Developers these days can search any project well-suited to their level of expertise and skill-set, apply to become contributors in that project, get interviewed and accepted.

After acceptance, they pick modules of their own choosing and get started on working on their part of the system. The moment their tasks are completed, they commit the code on any of these version control developer platforms and get paid their fair share of the amount.

**Enhanced Code Quality:**
Different programmers have different coding habits. Some of them are in habit of writing small bits of code and make it go live while others submit completed files of the code.

The developer platforms ensure that a developer should follow a certain set of rules and regulations. Initially, the developer with a higher number of commits was considered as highly productive. Nowadays, it's not so. Productivity trackers in the developer platforms have ensured a thorough and logical determination of productive contributors.

The rest of the factors which play a vital role in determining and measuring the productivity of a developer are:

- Code language.
- Code quality.
- Compliance with OOP fundamentals.
- Code functionality.

That's the actual beauty of collaborative development!

Constituents of a Developer Platform:
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There can be many fundamentals of a developer platform but generally, there are three.

**1. The Source Code:**
The core idea behind introducing the developer platforms was to maintain the sanctity of the source code which is a suite of well-planned instructions which forms the basis of any software project. Throughout the entire project, every contributor tries his level best to keep his/her code distinguished from the rest of the contributors.

**2. Repository:**
At this level, who don't know what does this word represent? Of course, it's central storage where the entire code and related files are placed which are related to a certain project. Except, in developer platforms, this central storage is cloud-based and the only thing which a contributor has to worry about, is the deadline.

**3. Version Control:**
The best thing about the version control feature is, it keeps a record of all the previous versions of a code related to a project in a tree-like structure. You start either from the roots and keep on building up till the parent node comes, or you start right from a sub-root and start developing your way down. At every level, the activities that you do are tracked and are totally visible to the team lead.

In order to stay updated about the changes and to track the work logs of every contributor in the team, there is a strong need to leverage the potential of developer platforms.

Be it the Github.com or Gitlab or even the Crowdsourcer.io, the main idea behind these platforms is to increase productivity and promote an environment of contribution and take it to the next level.

The contributor platforms have changed the way people used to plan, code, save and update their tasks. These platforms have also ensured strict standards of professionalism which the developer's community always lacks. Software projects are being developed at a lower cost and within timing constraints. This is the age of developer platforms and how far it'll go, only time will tell!