Sencha, a provider of tools for cross-platform web application development, announced the results of the sixth annual Strategy Analytics Developer Survey, in which the tools company participated.
Based on responses from more than 500 mobile application developers, including Sencha developers, the report reveals an increase in the number of both mobile and desktop devices that developers will support next year, showing strongest predicted growth using HTML5 as the app developer platform. Of all the technologies for building native or Web applications, HTML5 shows the strongest predicted growth at 20 percent, according to the survey.
“As this survey illustrates, we are seeing developers increasingly turning to HTML5 to build cross-platform web applications,” said Art Landro, CEO of Sencha, in a statement. “In our conversations with enterprise customers, we consistently hear that they are using our web application platform to help them deliver on their application requirements in the face of fragmented mobile devices, form factors, platforms and operating systems. As developers and enterprises continue to manage the increased complexity of enterprise mobility and app development, I’m certain we’ll see HTML5 continue to emerge as the core app developer technology of choice.”
Results of the survey, which gathered data on mobile app developers’ preferences and attitude toward application development, devices, platforms and developer programs, showed that smartphone devices continue to be a primary target with 92 percent of developers supporting smartphone apps in the next year, followed by 84 percent supporting tablets and 36 percent supporting PCs.
The survey showed that 17 percent of respondents said they develop apps for business, 32 percent said they build apps for consumers and 50 percent said they create apps for both. Yet, 42.6 percent of developers surveyed said they create business apps, more than any other category. Utilities made up the next highest category at 34 percent, followed by entertainment (29.3 percent), education (26.4 percent), games (25.9 percent), lifestyle (24.6 percent), productivity (24.4 percent) and social networking (18.7 percent).
Meanwhile, in another developer study, RebelLabs, a technical content and community site for Java developers sponsored by toolmaker ZeroTurnaround, recently announced the findings of its annual Java productivity survey that shows that development teams are more proficient at diagnosing, fixing and testing performance issues.
The RebelLabs study identifies how performance testing is done by organizations. This year’s survey shows that developers are tasked with fixing performance issues, irrespective of who finds them; nearly six performance issues are found on average during each application release; and it takes about one working week to diagnose, correct and test performance fixes. The survey also found that dedicated performance teams are twice as likely to find and fix application performance glitches compared to other teams like operations.
Indeed, the study showed that high-performing software organizations were more efficient and proactive than others. These teams are 38 percent faster at diagnosing, fixing and testing performance issues. They are also almost 40 percent more likely to profile on a daily or weekly basis; and are 20 percent less likely to test reactively when issues arise.
The 2015 survey saw record participation from more than 1,500 software developers, architects, and managers across all industries, company sizes and geographic regions. The vast majority of respondents are software developers working on Web applications (70 percent), followed by desktop applications (11 percent), then batch (6 percent), other (9 percent) and mobile (4 percent).
According to the survey, the most common cause of performance issues are inefficient application code and slow, as well as too many, database queries.