developers

With $8.6M in seed funding, Nx wants to take monorepos mainstream • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 17, 2022Posted in Bazel, developers, Enterprise, funding, NX, StartupsNo Comments

Narwhal, the company behind the popular monorepo-focused open source Nx build system for JavaScript code, today announced that it has raised an $8.6 million seed funding round co-led by Nexus Venture Partners and Andreesen Horowitz. A number of angel investors, including GitHub co-founder Tom Preston-Werner, also participated in this round. Founded by two former Google employees on the Angular team, Jeff Cross (CEO) and Victor Savkin (CTO), Narwahl actually started out as an Angular consulting shop, helping large banks, airlines and other enterprises — the kind of companies that typically use Angular. As Cross told me, it was working with Capital One that actually pushed the team to pursue Nx and turn that into the company’s main product. At that point, the concept of monorepos was already very familiar to them, thanks to their work at Google, which uses one of the world’s largest monorepos to manage its codebase. Image Credits: Nx “They had their login team,” Cross explained. “If you logged in to CapitalOne.com, it’s seven lines of business building one unified app — and it was split across so many repositories, they couldn’t coordinate on deploys, they couldn’t coordinate really on anything. And they really needed a monorepo. And so we built Nx for their use case and then made it work with every other client we were working with, which was most of these large companies.” Cross believes that monorepos are inherently easier to manage for large teams. The founders, he said, were spoiled at Google because thanks to the monorepo, any developer could build any part of Google’s codebase with minimal effort. Everything, after all, used the same tool chain and testing infrastructure. Meanwhile, having many teams work on different repositories creates a lot of friction, given that the teams then have to build a common API — and create a new repository for it, create the integration process and figure out how to publish that. “And with publishing, inevitably every company adds versioning to the publishing. So it’s never ‘we publish every commit and it’s immediately updated in the repository.’ It’s more like: ‘we publish it, we use somewhere to say if this a breaking change, a minor one, or is this a patch? And what that ends up happening in most companies is that they never get the time to actually update it,” Cross said. So the idea behind Nx is to give every company the tools to manage their JavaScript monorepos — and migrate them to one if necessary. As Cross explained it, the open-source Nx project and Nx Cloud help companies organize their code in these massive repositories, using Nx’s concept of project graphs. It’s worth noting that Nx was great inspired by Google’s Bazel build and test system, so it includes some familiar features like the ability to distribute computation and task execution across multiple machines. Cross cited one major retail giant the company is currently working with that made the move to Nx’s enterprise product and now saves over 40,000 hours of compute time a month thanks to its distributed caching system. One of the nice features of Nx (and also Bazel, to be fair), is that it knows when two developers are trying to run the same tasks and checks if there is already a cached version. Narwhal/Nx is already a bit ahead of most open-source companies at the seed stage in that it already has a hosted service (Nx Cloud) and an enterprise version as its main products. Given the kind of large enterprise customers Nx works with, it’s no surprise that Nx offers them the ability to run the service in their private instances and isolated from external APIs. The company currently has just over 30 employees on its team, which is mostly remote. Of those, 25 are engineers. Most recently, Narwhal also took over the stewardship of Lerna.js, a popular open-source JavaScript monorepo tool that had previously remained somewhat unmaintained. Narwhal will now provide critical bug fixes and security updates for it. “Monorepo adoption is exploding worldwide, driven by advantages like ease of collaboration, shared codebase visibility, dependency management, and refactoring,” said Abhishek Sharma, managing director at Nexus Venture Partners. “However, as monorepos scale, robust tooling becomes essential to managing them, and Build Time becomes a critical factor. This is where Nx shines. We were drawn to Nx because of its world-class team, category leadership, strong developer community, and massive global adoption: from startups to Fortune 500 companies. We’re grateful to Jeff and Victor for choosing us as their partner in this journey.”

Microsoft’s SQL Server 2022 is all about Azure • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 16, 2022Posted in cloud connection, database, developers, Enterprise, Microsoft, on-premises database, sql server, SQL Server 2022No Comments

Microsoft today released SQL Server 2022, the latest version of its database software, which originally launched more than 33 years ago. Microsoft describes this release as the “most Azure-enabled release of SQL Server yet” and with connections to Azure Synapse Link for enabling real-time analytics over the database, Azure Purview for data governance and disaster recovery with the help of Azure SQL Managed Instance, this release is, in many ways, the culmination of the cloud-connection groundwork the team started quite a few years ago. “From the very beginning, the vision [for SQL Server] really was about — databases were very complex — how do you make that extremely simple? And in many ways, I think that has been a key reason why it lasted for so long and how we’ve evolved it as well,” Ran Kumar, Microsoft’s corporate VP for Azure Data, told me. “One of the big things that I think about with SQL Server 2022 is that we’ve made it completely cloud-connected to Azure.” He noted that while the migration of on-prem workloads is happening, Microsoft’s customers are all moving at very different speeds and some, for a multitude of reasons, may never move to the cloud at all. That, he argues, is why the company always bet on a hybrid approach, but it is also why a lot of customers started asking about how they could get the value of being in the cloud without actually having to move all of their data to it. “That was really the key thesis of why we invested in making this into a cloud release,” Kumar said. Image Credits: Microsoft A good example here is the new disaster recovery function that allows users to replicate their data in SQL Managed Instance on Azure and use that as a backup for their main on-premises SQL Server, which should make it easy to fail over to that when the main server goes down. Kumar also noted that with Synapse Link, SQL Server users can now run real-time analytics over their database without having to set up a complex infrastructure. “All you need to do is check a box and say: ‘replicate this data in near real time.’ It lands it into Synapse and you can have your Power BI report that’s reading that data and that whole pipeline is just built for you,” he said. And for companies that do indeed have a hybrid setup, support for the Purview data governance service now enables them to set their policies, no matter whether the data resides in SQL Server in the cloud or on premises. In addition to the work on the new cloud-connected capabilities, the team also, of course, worked on improving the database’s overall performance, stability and security posture. At the core of that work, at least for this release, was the database’s intelligent query processing engine, which can now optimize queries in a number of more complex scenarios, for example. Also interesting is a new pay-as-you-go billing model for SQL server through Azure Arc, Microsoft’s platform for managing cloud and on-premises resources. Using a connection to Azure Arc, which is part of the SQL Server 2022 setup process, on-premises users can now also opt for cloud-enabled billing to manage consumption spikes or for ad hoc use cases. As Kumar noted, SQL Server usage, despite all of the competition available today, continues to grow (though in part, that’s driven by existing customers expanding their usage). The new edition of SQL Server is now generally available, including the free Developer and Express editions.

Payload raises $4.7M for its developer-first headless CMS • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 15, 2022Posted in content management, developers, Enterprise, funding, headless CMS, seed round, StartupsNo Comments

Payload, which develops a headless open-source content management system (CMS), today announced that it has raised a $4.7 million seed round led by Google’s AI-focused Gradient Ventures. Other investors include MongoDB Ventures, Y Combinator, SV Angel, Grand Ventures and Exceptional Capital, in addition to a number of angel investors. Unlike most CMS tools, Michigan-based Payload puts its emphasis on developers. Bootstrapped since 2021, the team behind the platform argues that typical app frameworks give developers the tools to create their backends but not the CMS-style user interfaces they would need to manage apps and their content. Image Credits: Payload “To devs, ‘content management system’ is usually a swear word. If an engineer gets assigned a CMS project, it’s less than thrilling. They want to avoid roadblocks, write code and build things they’re proud of — but existing CMS’s get in the way of that left and right,” said CEO James Mikrut, who co-founded the company together with Dan Ribbens (COO) and Elliot DeNolf (CTO). “We’re not competing with Webflow or Squarespace — rather, we’re going to give talented engineers a tool they can trust to build critical content infrastructure.” Instead of building another no-code CMS, the team went in the exact opposite direction and built something more akin to a framework than ‘just’ a pure headless CMS. To get started, developers describe their configuration for Payload in TypeScript and the service creates a Mongo database, sets up REST and GraphQL APIs, handles file storage, authentication and access control — and, of course, creates the admin UI, which defaults to a clean, minimalist look. The company is currently in the middle of its first launch week, a concept that seems to be making the rounds among startups these days. Earlier this year, the team also launched version 1.0 and now that it has raised its first funding round, the plan is to expand the team and invest in the open-source community around Payload. And like most open-source startups, the company plans to launch a managed service, Payload Cloud, to power its monetization strategy and function as a hub for deploying Payload apps.

Retool launches Workflows to go beyond the front end • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 15, 2022Posted in automation service, backend automation, developers, Enterprise, low-code, retool, Software, StartupsNo Comments

Since its launch in 2017, Retool has made a name for itself by offering developers an easier way to build line-of-business apps for their internal users. Unlike the many low-code/no-code tools on the market today, Retool’s focus remains squarely on developers, despite its helpful drag-and-drop interface. Now, about half a year after announcing its $45 million funding round, the company is expanding its feature set by adding new tools for building backend workflows, too. Retool Workflows, as the company named this new feature, makes it easy for developers to create automated processes like cron jobs, custom alerts and standard extract, transform, load (ETL) tasks, using a similar graphical interface as the frontend tool, all while adding a lot more flexibility than tools like Zapier. “Some people try to put us in the no code-space or something. You’ll never hear us ever saying that,” Retool CEO and co-founder David Hsu told me. “The reason for that is we actually don’t believe in it really. I think if you look at tools like for example Airtable or Zapier or stuff like that, we think that’s really great if you have a simple use case or a medium-sized use case — it’s great for that. But if you want to build a really advanced use case, like an internal tool that an Amazon might build, for example, then Zapier will be able to get you 50% there very quickly, but the remaining 50% basically becomes impossible.” Image Credits: Retool Instead of going for a no-code approach, the Retool team always built its service for developers first. “We believe in the power of code,” said Hsu. He also noted that the trend he sees is that more and more people now learn how to code and that this is the trend he wants to bet on — not dumbing down the coding experience. Workflows fits right in here, he argues, because it’s very hard to build a low-code/no-code tool that allows you to build complex workflows without quickly hitting the limitations of what these tools can do without resorting to writing custom code (though we’ve seen quite a few companies try). Hsu noted that a lot of customers were already hacking the Retool app to make some of these capabilities work for them. But instead of firing off a cron job, they would write a script that would automatically click a button in a custom app at a certain time to kick off a workflow, for example (which is apparently what one of Retool’s customers did). “Developers need the flexibility of code. They want a toolset that speeds up work withoutnarrowing their options,” said Jamie Cuffe, Product Lead, Retool. “Retool Workflows aims to abstract away the tedious parts of building automations from scratch while preserving the ability to write code to solve the problem.” The Retool team argues that building regular cron jobs, with their arcane format, is both time consuming and error prone — and the final result is hard to maintain and debug. “I really think there is no developer-focused workflows product that I’m aware of. That is why we’re launching this,” said Hsu. In addition to running scripts at regular intervals, Retool Workflows can also use webhooks for a more event-driven approach. That means it could be used for alerting, in addition to more traditional lightweight ETL applications. Indeed, Hsu said that most users in the Workflows beta got started with alerting and notifications and then transitioned to ETL use cases over time. It’s worth noting that this isn’t so much an enterprise integration tool for moving data between applications but still squarely focused on getting this data into Retool-based line-of-business applications. “We needed an efficient way to translate product data in our warehouse into timely, insightfulreporting in Slack,” said Joel McLean, director of product growth at RE/MAX. “With Retool Workflows, my team can easily configure our resources in one place and focus only on writing the logic unique to our business.” The new service will be priced based on data throughput. Each Retool plan, including the free one, will come with 1GB of Workflows data for free, with overages starting at $50/GB. For now, Workflows is only available as a hosted service, but the team is already working on an on-prem version. That’s how many of Retool’s customers are already using its app building tool, including the likes of Stripe, Brex, Coinbase and Plaid, so it only makes sense for the company to do the same for Workflows.

Twitter cancels its Chirp conference for developers amid management transition • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 3, 2022Posted in Apps, Chirp, developers, elon buys twitter, TwitterNo Comments

Twitter is canceling its Chirp conference for developers amid management transition, the company said late Thursday. After Elon Musk took over the company last month, there have been several executive exits and directional changes in the company’s product strategy. So it is not surprising that social network is abandoning its plan for the conference’s return after more than a decade of hiatus. In a tweet, Twitter’s official account for developer-related announcements said that the company is “hard at work to make Twitter better for everyone, including developers” and it might soon share some news about the topic. We’re currently hard at work to make Twitter better for everyone, including developers! We’ve decided to cancel the #Chirp developer conference while we build some things that we’re excited to share with you soon. — Twitter Dev (@TwitterDev) November 2, 2022 The company’s head of developer products, Amir Shevat, didn’t provide any details about the reason behind canceling the conference and just tweeted “Winds of change” as a reaction to it. In June, Parag Agarwal-led Twitter announced that it’s bringing back the Chirp conference in November. The company also opened up a contest for developers to show creative use cases of its new v2 API with prices like $10,000 for winners of different categories and free access to the enterprise tier of the API for a year. Twitter first held Chirp in 2010 but abandoned the event the next year. While the platform has had a strenuous relationship with developers in the last decade, it was trying to win the community back with new programs and a refreshed API. What’s more, the company opened up API access to academic researchers last year. Earlier this year, it debuted a program called Twitter Toolbox, which highlighted some third-party apps. At that time, Shevat also said that the company was open to exploring models like Twitter’s own app store. Last week, Twitter opened up new endpoints to direct messages through the v2 API that enables third-party apps to provide a better DM experience to users. It’s unclear what Twitter for developers will look like in the Musk era. The Tesla CEO has given indications of engineering-led Twitter multiple times, so developers will hope that they will get better access to the company’s tools.

Google Play revamp to highlight higher-quality apps, offer new promotional capabilities • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 2, 2022Posted in Android, Apps, developers, Google, play storeNo Comments

Google today announced it’s making several changes to the Google Play Store that will impact Android apps’ discoverability, how developers can market their apps to consumers, and various trust and safety concerns. Most importantly, Google is now advising developers that the Play Store will begin to prioritize apps that deliver on both technical and in-app quality by promoting them in more places across the Play Store where they can be discovered by consumers. The changes hint at Google’s intent to take a more editorial eye as to how apps are featured and distributed on the Play Store. That’s an area that’s typically been a heavier focus for Apple in prior years — especially following its own App Store revamp in 2017, which saw it separating games and apps into their own tabs and the introduction of editorial content, including articles and tips, on the store’s main page. The Play Store isn’t going quite that far, however. Instead, Google says it will now begin to steer consumers away from lower-quality apps by changing how it determines which apps will be made more visible on the platform. Specifically, it’s implementing new quality thresholds that will exclude apps that exceed certain crash rates and “app not responsive” (ANR) rates, both on an overall and per-phone model basis. Google says the apps that don’t meet these thresholds will be excluded from some areas of the Play Store, including recommendations, while others may even include a warning on their store listing to set appropriate user expectations. Image Credits: Google Beyond technical quality, Play Store editors will also look at a range of factors, like whether or not the app or game has a polished design, if the content keeps users engaged, if the onboarding process is clear, if the ads are well-integrated, if the app is accessible, and if the navigation, controls and menus are easy to use, among other things. They’ll also check to see if the app meets Android’s quality guidelines and best practices, detailed on the Android Developers website. In addition, the company will roll out to developers new promotional content formats and a new type of Custom Store Listing designed to help place apps in front of more users. In the case of the former, developers will be able to leverage LiveOps — the special merchandising units for promoting apps on the Play Store. Today, these are used to promote discounts and offers, major app updates, in-app events, pre-registration announcements, and more. Apple has a similar feature, launched last year. The sorts of marketing units give app stores a more real-time feel as they can market on reasons to download and launch apps now, instead of just serving as a general promotion. Image Credits: Google Google notes that developers using LiveOps have seen a 3.6% increase in revenue and 5.1% increase in 28-day daily active users versus similar titles that don’t take advantage of the offering. Now, it will rename LiveOps to “Promotional Content” to reflect longer-term plans to expand the feature to support new content types — including those which will see the promotional units appearing more deeply integrated within the Play Store across users’ homepages, in search and discovery areas, in title listings, and directly in apps via deeplinks. Developers will also soon be able to create a new type of listing that will allow them to specifically target churned users (people who tried the app or game, then abandoned it). This “Churned-user Custom Store Listings” format, which will roll out closer to year-end, will be able to display a specific message designed to re-acquire prior users. Two other changes are focused on app safety and protecting developers — and the consumers downloading their apps — from coordinated attacks. Google will update the Play Integrity API, which helps protect against risky and fraudulent traffic, with more features. Developers will be able to customize API responses, set up tests in the Play Console, and use new reporting to analyze their API responses. They’ll also be able to debug API responses from the Play Store app’s developer settings on any device. Plus, Google says it’s launching a new program designed to address coordinated attacks on app ratings and reviews. The company didn’t offer much information on how this program would work, but it would give developers a way to fight back if their app was being unfairly targeted with fake reviews either by users or their competitors, presumably. This is an area of concern that recently made the news, in fact, when a top-ranked new social app, Gas, suddenly became the target of a hoax that claimed it was being used for human trafficking, leading users to delete their accounts. The changes follow earlier updates to the Play Store designed to help consumers better discover non-smartphone apps that run on their smartwatches, TV, or tablets. Earlier this year, Google also warned developers it would hide and block downloads for outdated apps. Google alerted developers they must now, as of Nov. 1, 2022, target API level 30 (Android 11) or above if they want their app to be discoverable on the play Store by new users running newer versions of the Android OS.

Elon buys Twitter, new App Store rules, gambling ads backlash • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 29, 2022Posted in app stores, Apple, Apps, developers, Google, Mobile, This Week In AppsNo Comments

Welcome back to This Week in Apps, the weekly ZebethMedia series that recaps the latest in mobile OS news, mobile applications and the overall app economy. Global app spending reached $65 billion in the first half of 2022, up only slightly from the $64.4 billion during the same period in 2021, as hypergrowth fueled by the pandemic has slowed down. But overall, the app economy is continuing to grow, having produced a record number of downloads and consumer spending across both the iOS and Google Play stores combined in 2021, according to the latest year-end reports. Global spending across iOS and Google Play last year was $133 billion, and consumers downloaded 143.6 billion apps. This Week in Apps offers a way to keep up with this fast-moving industry in one place with the latest from the world of apps, including news, updates, startup fundings, mergers and acquisitions, and much more. Do you want This Week in Apps in your inbox every Saturday? Sign up here: techcrunch.com/newsletters. Musk buys Twitter It’s official, Elon Musk now owns Twitter. In typical Musk fashion, the transition has been nothing but chaotic, with the deal closing just ahead of the deadline set by the Delaware Chancery Court — the court where Musk was planning to try to exit the deal by claiming Twitter had misled him about the number of bots on the platform. (He was really looking to get the price down, of course!) In any event, the Telsa and SpaceX exec now has a new toy and everyone is waiting to see what comes next. Earlier, Musk had hinted at layoffs, then later retracted his statements, saying he wouldn’t fire 75% after all. However, he did immediately clear out the C-suite, including CEO Parag Agrawal, CFO Ned Segal, General Counsel Sean Edgett and Head of Legal, Trust and Safety Vijaya Gadde — a sign that he’s planning to fill out Twitter’s top ranks with execs who will do his own bidding and not fight for the Twitter of days past. Still, Musk’s talk about a Twitter that’s more permissive of “free speech” doesn’t quite align with his message to advertisers posted shortly after the deal’s close: He promised marketers that Twitter can’t turn into a “free-for-all hellscape.” That’s clearly a tacit acknowledgment on Musk’s part that advertisers don’t want to post their content next to hate speech-filled tweets. And despite Musk’s plans to grow Twitter’s subscription business, around 90% of Twitter’s revenue today comes from advertising. Given what he had to pay to own Twitter, Musk probably doesn’t want to have to pay to keep it running, too. App Store Review Guidelines now give Apple a cut of NFTs, in-app advertising Image Credits: ZebethMedia Along with the launch of iOS 16.1, Apple also introduced new App Store Review Guidelines. Among the major changes were two new rules designed to give Apple a bigger slice of the NFT market and Meta’s core advertising business. The company said apps will be allowed to list, mint, transfer and let users view their own NFTs, but clarified that owning an NFT could not be a shortcut to unlocking any more features in an app. In other words, the ownership of an NFT shouldn’t be a way to route around Apple’s in-app purchases. In addition, Apple said NFT apps can’t display external links or other calls-to-action to purchase NFTs — that can only take place through Apple’s own in-app purchases system, as well. This change is not all that surprising. As the web3 market grows, Apple wanted to find a way to stake its claim on the revenue and transactions that are occuring inside these new apps. Plus, it’s a better consumer experience for NFT marketplace apps to not just function as a showcase for users’ purchases, but as a place where users can actually transact. The other big rule adjustment, however, is a bit more startling. In a bold move, Apple essentially said it deserves a cut of Meta’s ads business as well as any other social app. The new rule around social media apps now states that purchases of “boosts” have to flow through Apple’s in-app purchase system. This could impact any app that sells the ability to boost a post to a wider audience, like Meta (Facebook, Instagram), TikTok, Twitter, dating apps and others. Meta, of course, took significant issue with this change, saying that Apple’s policy undercuts others in the digital economy after Apple had previously said it wouldn’t take a share of developer ad revenue. While Meta isn’t exactly a sympathetic player here, it’s concerning that Apple has decided it can now tax advertising inside iOS apps at the same time it runs its own expanding ads business. That seems like a move regulators will need to look into asap. App Store gambling ads backlash Speaking of Apple’s ads business…The company’s App Store ads platform expanded this week to include new ad slots like the main Today tab and a “You Might Also Like” section at the bottom of individual app listings. The slots are available in all countries as of October 25, except China. The ads have a blue background and an “Ad” label to differentiate them from other listings. Developers, however, were immediately disturbed by the instant deluge of gambling ads that appeared marketed alongside their own, including against kids’ applications and, in at least one case, a gambling addiction recovery app. This was a poor look for Apple. After all, the gambling category itself is already controversial — many developers would rather not share an app marketplace with these often predatory apps in the first place, much less have them advertised alongside their own. Apple at least moved quickly to respond to the backlash by “pausing” gambling ads and a few other categories on App Store product pages, but the company didn’t say how long this pause would last or what it planned to do about the situation in the long term. Spotify accuses Apple of anti-competitive behavior, this

Docker launches a first preview of its WebAssembly tooling • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 24, 2022Posted in developers, Docker, Enterprise, infrastructure, kubecon detroit 2022, WebAssemblyNo Comments

Docker is still around and likely doing better – at last in financial terms — than during its early hype cycle that kicked off the container revolution (only to then be eclipsed by Kubernetes and its ecosystem). Today, the company announced the first technical preview of its WebAssembly (Wasm) support. Browser vendors pioneered Wasm to run web apps at native speeds, with code compiled from C, C++, Rust and other languages and run in a secure sandbox. Currently, you can compile about 40 languages to Wasm. But similar to how node.js brought JavaScript to the server, Wasm is now also migrating to the backend. Cloudflare supports it in its edge computing service, for example. We’re also starting to see some funding rounds in this space as VCs start waking up to the potential, with Cosmonic today announcing a $9 million funding round for its Wasm PaaS, for example. Fermyon announced a $20 million Series A round earlier this month. Docker clearly wants to be an early player in this space, too. The company notes that this is still very much a technical preview and that things will likely break. In this case, the Docker Engine uses the same containerd container runtime as the rest of the Docker ecosystem, but instead of using runc to run the container processes, it uses the wasmedge runtime. While Docker doesn’t go into details here, the promise of wasmedge is that it offers significantly faster startup times compared to Linux containers and that WasmEdge apps are significantly smaller (and run faster). Image Credits: Docker “We see Wasm as a complementary technology to Linux containers where developers can choose which technology they use (or both!) depending on the use case,” Docker’s Michael Irwin writes in today’s announcement. “And as the community explores what’s possible with Wasm, we want to help make Wasm applications easier to develop, build, and run using the experience and tools you know and love.” In addition to the product news, Docker also today announced that it will be joining the Bytecode Alliance, the non-profit behind WebAssembly and the WebAssembly System Interface that makes these new projects possible, as a voting member.

Africa’s tech talent accelerators attract students, VC funding as Big Tech comes calling • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 23, 2022Posted in africa, developers, EC Africa, EC Future of Work, Startups, VentureNo Comments

Tech giants are increasingly looking for tech talent in Africa, where the number of developers reached 716,000 last year, up 3.8% from 2020, according to Google. In the last six months, Microsoft and Amazon have been on a recruitment drive that came along with enticing offers including relocation to their hubs in the U.S. and Europe, endearing themselves to the small but growing talent pool amid tough competition from other tech giants like Google, as well as startups. This demand for African developers is expected to continue, buoyed by the effects of the Great Resignation, which led employers to search for new talent elsewhere, and as tech behemoths like Google, Oracle and Visa expand their operations in Africa. Yet as demand rises, the number of new developers entering the market is disproportionately small, mainly because traditional education institutions in most African countries have been slow to revamp their courses to keep up with job market demands and the fast-evolving world of technology. On the other hand, the gap between demand and supply has unequivocally steered the launch of new developer schools and propelled the growth of existing ones in recent months, many of which are gaining the attention of global venture capitalists.

Developers pour into crypto space despite stagnant markets • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 17, 2022Posted in Crypto, developers, EC Blockchain, EC Cryptocurrency, ethereum, Polygon, sdk, SolanaNo Comments

This year was huge for the crypto developer space even though the digital asset market continues to wallow in a downturn, according to a new report by web3 developer platform Alchemy. Although the crypto market capitalization is down about 58% year to date, web3 developers are pouring into the space. The report found that developer activity increased based on the number of crypto software developer kit (SDK) libraries being downloaded, smart contracts being stored on blockchains, and the growth in the number of decentralized applications (dApps) in the market. “It’s a really exciting time in web3 overall and especially in the web3 development space,” Jason Shah, head of growth at Alchemy, said to ZebethMedia. “We were shocked at the results [because they run] counter to the narratives out there with token prices being down, pullbacks in investments, and even layoffs. But in the data with libraries, smart contracts, and dApp growth, all those numbers are up year over year.” Despite the bear market, crypto has become a “builder market,” with many clearly undeterred, Shah said. “Crypto bear markets are often when the best projects get built,” Francesco Melpignano, CEO of layer-1 blockchain Kadena, said to ZebethMedia.