2022 in review: 5 biggest learnings for developers
From AI to System Design, here are my essential takeaways for software engineers and managers heading into 2023
2022 has seen its ups and downs.
Over the course of the year, we saw the cryptocurrency market skyrocket, then plummet. Meanwhile, System Design has emerged as an essential skill for developers and engineering managers alike, as talk of Ticketmaster's reliability and changes to Twitter's architecture captivated the industry and the media.
Despite warning signs of a recession (including layoffs across the industry), and even anxiety around AI taking our jobs (more on that later, if you missed last week's newsletter), developers are still in demand. In fact, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) predicts a 25% increase in employment of software developers by 2031. I anticipate an even higher rate of growth globally in the coming decade, which is a topic I plan to write about in a future newsletter.
With more jobs on the way, and with newer technologies becoming more accessible to the majority of devs (including APIs, cloud, and ML), software engineers are as eager as ever to learn new skills.
Here on Educative we have seen this appetite for learning firsthand. I am humbled to say that over 1.6 million developers, EMs, and engineering teams are now using Educative to master new skills and level up in their career.
So for my last newsletter of the year, I'll be discussing five of the biggest learnings for the dev community entering 2023, and what they may mean for your career.
5 takeaways for developers entering 2023
1. System Design can make or break you
For large-scale tech companies and interview candidates alike, 2022 has proven that shortcomings in System Design can be a major downfall.
Most of today's online services are expected to be almost always available — at least, for users on the privileged side of the digital divide. That means the consequences of poor System Design can be severe.
In the month of November, we saw the difference a well-designed system can make for in-demand services. For Ticketmaster, inadequate System Design turned a Taylor Swift ticket rush into a lawsuit and investigation by the DOJ. (You can read my newsletter deep dive on the Ticketmaster story here).
Meanwhile, Stripe was able to maintain remarkably low levels of downtime on one of their most high-traffic days of the year: Black Friday. (You can read my full thoughts on Stripe's System Design here.) And, as I discussed in another newsletter, it remains to be seen whether Twitter's design will be able to hold up under Elon Musk's changes.
For many individual developers and managers, your System Design knowledge will determine whether you can advance from junior to senior levels. Most large engineering teams are organized by skill-based levels (this year, even Netflix introduced levels to their engineer roles, breaking their 25-year long "one level" policy). A greater understanding of System Design will get you promoted to higher, more senior levels.
In interviews for developer and managerial roles, a failure to demonstrate an understanding of System Design can put you at risk of being down-leveled (i.e., receiving a job offer at a level lower than the role to which you applied).
So far I've been thrilled to see tens of thousands of developers strengthening their System Design skills with Educative's new comprehensive course: Grokking Modern System Design Interview for Engineers & Managers.
This course was created to help learners develop a working knowledge of foundational System Design building blocks, and then put that knowledge into practice by designing 13 real-world systems. (These are the applied System Design skills I often found lacking in candidates during the hundreds of System Design Interviews I've conducted over the years).
As a sneak peek, this cheat sheet distills some of the key takeaways from Grokking Modern System Design Interview for Engineers & Managers:
If you're curious to see where you stand in your System Design proficiency, you can get a comprehensive report on your current skill set and a tailored learning plan with our System Design Assessment.
2. AI and ML are on the rise (but they won't overtake us)
As I discussed in last week's newsletter on ChatGPT, AI isn't taking over the world (or our jobs) — at least not during our lifetimes!
But AI and ML technologies are getting more sophisticated. More and more industries are applying ML to gain insights and process massive amounts of data. We've seen ML technology such as computer vision and language learning models, being used to do everything from assisting in agricultural production to protecting maternal health and helping personalize medicine.
Meanwhile, we're seeing Data Science continue to take off as a field. The BLS predicts a 36% increase in employment of Data Scientists by 2031.
A few years ago, I discussed how ML can set you apart as a next-generation engineer in System Design interviews. This is still true. But the bigger truth is that a working knowledge of ML can set you apart no matter what kind of developer you are.
That's why I've been incredibly excited to see many of our learners invest in their career growth by learning how to leverage ML algorithms.
This year at Educative we saw thousands of learners bolster their ML skills by:
Graduating from Comprehensive Skill Paths such as:
Graduating from API integrations courses, such as:
Adding to their portfolio by building Projects such as:
Learners have been hungry to learn about ML, AI, and Data Science this year — and we will be bringing many more expert-created resources on these topics to Educative in 2023.
3. There are still more amazing programming languages to learn (as always)
Learning new languages isn't just a necessity of keeping up with the fast-changing tech industry. It's also one of the aspects that keeps our work exciting and challenging, and moves us forward in our career.
The 2022 Stack Overflow Developer Survey found that wanting to work with new technologies is one of the top 4 reasons that devs seek new jobs.
Technologies encompass the full range of databases, web frameworks, cloud platforms, libraries, and languages. However, when going into detail about which technologies they wanted to work with, the majority of responses (69k+) fell under the category of programming, scripting, and markup languages.
Even if we have our preferred programming languages (I'd consider myself a native C++ speaker), each year brings its own shifts and trends. It's always worth learning languages that are gaining traction in the industry.
2022 saw significant interest in relative newcomers like Rust, Go, and Kotlin — but also familiar faces such as Python and Ruby.
According to Stack Overflow, Rust and Python were tied among respondents among the top most wanted technologies:
I've written before about my own experience as a C++ programmer opening up to Rust, and what its popularity means for developers and managers.
Stack Overflow's results summarized that "Rust is on its seventh year as the most loved language with 87% of developers saying they want to continue using it." Unsurprisingly for Educative, we saw thousands of learners get hands-on building full-stack web applications in Rust this year with our Skill Path: Become a Rust Web Developer,
Python, Ruby, Go, Kotlin, and Rust were in the top 20 programming languages based on popularity rank on Stack Overflow and GitHub (according to last June's RedMonk Programming Language Rankings). The TIOBE index also ranks Python, Ruby, Go, and Rust in its top 20, noting that Kotlin keeps inching closer to this tier.
In 2022, thousands of learners upskilled in these in-demand languages with various new offerings on Educative:
The Skill Path Golang for Programmers
The course Data Structures & Algorithms In Go
The course The Practical Guide to Python for Scientists and Engineers
The Skill Path Become a Ruby Professional
The revamped (free) course Learn Ruby from Scratch
While I could recommend all of them, in next week's newsletter, I'll make the case for my top three languages to learn in 2023 (stay tuned to find out which!).
4. Developers are increasingly depending on APIs
With our applications more interconnected than ever, we're lucky to have API technology to help them work together more seamlessly.
2022's State of APIs survey saw 62.6% of developers report an increased reliance on APIs this year, compared with 2021.
Eventually, nearly every developer will depend on APIs for their work (except, perhaps, a few OS developers out there). API use is clearly trending up, as an even higher percentage of developers (69.2%) said that they expect to rely more on APIs in 2023 than in 2022.
Compared to 2021, the State of APIs' 2022 survey also showed a drastic increase in the amount of developers who reported using particular APIs in production. From 2021 to 2022, devs reported an increased use in production of these APIs. This chart shows an increased use in APIs from REST and SOAP to GraphQL and Kafka:
If you're working on a mobile or web application, your application is bound to interact with APIs. And having an understanding of what you're interacting with can not only improve your work — it will likely be increasingly expected of you. (Technology reporter Loraine Lawson notes that a lack of API design skills is a growing concern for organizations.)
Given the prevalence of APIs across the industry, we've been excited to see more and more learners at Educative developing API skills through our various courses.
Many developers have learned more about GPT-3 and how to integrate OpenAI API endpoints with React in our course Using OpenAI API for Natural Language Processing in JavaScript.
There is so much to gain by learning API integrations — from saving hours of writing code from scratch to unlocking new career opportunities.
Naturally, we've seen learners eagerly work on this skill set. We've seen many make use of the skill path Become an API Integrator, and others graduate into the following new courses on more specialized integrations, including:
Messaging: Automations with the Slack API in Python
Payment/Finance: Handling Financial Services with Square API in Python
Entertainment/Video streaming: Integrate the GIPHY API in JavaScript
Most of our API courses this year have been concerned with Python and JavaScript (we have published over 30 in the last few months alone) — and we will be introducing many more API courses, in a wider range of languages, in 2023.
5. Strategic interview prep is more important than ever
High-achieving developers have always known that interviewing is a skill you can build. It is possible to train for coding interviews (and System Design interviews, as I explained earlier). In fact, preparing strategically can help you efficiently demonstrate to interviewers that you are hireable.
Meanwhile, the job market is becoming more competitive with looming threats of recession. Layoffs are already underway. This places even more importance on the interview, as it is the one phase of the hiring process that you control.
We created our newest interview prep course, Grokking Coding Interview Patterns, with this reality in mind. The best part: you don’t have to drill endless sets of practice questions. Why? Because the course was created to help you efficiently internalize the most common patterns used in coding interviews.
If you are looking for a new job in 2023, I hope that this course can help you optimize your prep and confidently stand out in a challenging market.
Preparing for an uncertain future
Apart from what I've addressed today, many other events impacted developers this year. Interest and investment in quantum computing grew, as well as with the metaverse. Data breaches affected hundreds of companies and organizations, from Red Cross to Uber and Nvidia. And we had no shortage of news about companies reorganizing and transforming (perhaps the loudest news coming from Elon Musk's Twitter).
I'm sure 2023 will bring its own surprises, which is what makes working in tech so interesting. One thing we can always expect is change. In response, we should always be ready to adapt. I hope today's takeaways help you plan for a year of continued learning and success, wherever you are in your coding journey.
As a final reminder: it's not too late to make use of Educative's end-of-year sale.
Educative Premium will get you access to 600+ courses, projects, and Skill Paths created by industry experts. While we'll have even more great offerings available next year, here are three of my personal top picks to get you started in 2023:
Try it out and let me know what you think.
Happy learning — and see you next year!