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The New Kingmakers
book

The New Kingmakers

by Stephen O'Grady
March 2013
Intermediate to advanced content levelIntermediate to advanced
56 pages
1h 32m
English
O'Reilly Media, Inc.
Content preview from The New Kingmakers

Chapter 4. The Evidence

What Would a Developer’s World Look Like?

If members of the newly empowered developer class really are the New Kingmakers, shaping their own destiny and increasingly setting the technical agenda, how could we tell? What would happen if developers could choose their technologies, rather than having them chosen for them?

  • First, there would be greater technical diversity. Where enterprises tend to consolidate their investments in as few technologies as possible (according to the “one throat to choke” model) developers, as individuals, are guided by their own preferences rather than a corporate mandate. Because they’re more inclined to use the best tool for the job, a developer-dominated marketplace would demonstrate a high degree of fragmentation.
  • Second, open source would grow and proliferate. Whether it’s because they enjoy the collaboration, abhor unnecessary duplication of effort, because they’re building a resume of code, because they find it easy to obtain, or because it costs them nothing, developers prefer open source over proprietary commercial alternatives in the majority of cases. If developers were calling the shots, we’d expect to see open source demonstrating high growth.
  • Third, developers would ignore or bypass vendor-led, commercially oriented technical standards efforts. Corporate-led standards tend to be designed by committee, with consensus and buy-in from multiple parties required prior to sign off. Like any product of a committee, standards ...
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Publisher Resources

ISBN: 9781449368036Errata PagePurchase book