Why JavaScript Is Eating the World
In the 90s it was clear what a technology company was. Microsoft, IBM, Cisco etc. They wrote software, built hardware and sold it to all other non-tech companies. If you were a traditional business, software was seen as an exogenous part of the company. Need an eCommerce platform for your grocery chain? Sure, just go to your friendly IBM rep who will hook you up with a enterprise platform for a few tens of $millions in licensing costs. You have the customers, they have the technology. Trade, exactly as it is intended to work. Need to add functionality? Just hire a large consultancy and they will implement it eventually for huge fee.
The enterprise grade solutions which power all large companies were never designed to be easy to customise. Software was viewed much like a nuclear power plant. You build it and then it sits there doing its job. It will need maintenance and eventual decommissioning, but until then it functions as a unit. Those enterprise grade solutions were similarly designed as a unit.
I tried to build something like a mainframe, a system that was capable of doing anything, that would be able to do what might be needed in five years.
- Donald Ferguson, Former IBM Chief Architect
Sadly, this approach to software development is not even remotely viable today. 17.8% of UK retail spending is now online. Customers demand rich interfaces, great usability and websites that are just as functional on a mobile device. Technology has to be at the core of every company that wants to survive.
Challenger banks in UK have gone from zero a few years ago to now having millions of customers. That growth shows no sign of abating. Traditional banks are starting to notice and they are terrified. Monzo is able to ship features on a monthly basis that take High Street banks years to get right. By putting technology at the core of their business they are able to outcompete giants with a fraction of the workforce and capital.
That is where the future lies. Off-shoring technology in a bid to save costs is a losing game. Companies pursuing that policy are acquiring costly mistakes that will take them years and millions in developer costs to fix. Those companies which want to survive are desperately trying to get developers on their side. Get the technology right and you can capitalise on your existing customer base. Get it wrong and you can wave them goodbye as they leave for startups which are better able to meet their needs.
Right now one of the hottest areas in software development is digital transformation. Companies like YLD, Adaptive Lab and Buildit are hired by the biggest companies in UK to not only help them deliver products but also build their engineering culture. It is no longer enough to just hire engineers, stick them in a basement and get to write code. Software development comes with its own methodologies which need to understood and adopted across the board to see results from their huge technology spend.
What this means is that now is the best time to be software developer. The demand has not risen equally for all technologies. For example, the demand for Ruby developers has been flat for the last few years. The number of roles advertised has shrunk slightly from 2,190 contract roles two years ago to 2,160 today. JavaScript on the other hand has gone from strength to strength. Despite only being around for four years or so, the demand for React.js experience has risen dramatically with 2,124 contracts currently advertised, up from 643 two years ago. The demand for Node.js developers is now at 3,710 roles up from 2,269 two years ago. It’s worth noting the both React.js and Node.js are JavaScript frameworks rather than standalone languages. Yet, both continue to outpace the growth of traditional serverside languages.
It makes perfect sense. JavaScript is the only language that runs natively in the browser. As companies seek to cater to their customers and create rich interfaces, it is the only option available to them. On the server however, the number of available languages continues to increase. Ruby is seeing strong competition from newcomers such Golang or even traditional languages such as Python.
So if you want a future proof career in tech, now is the time to invest in JavaScript. New language features and tools come out every month which continue to make it more powerful. As day rates for JavaScript developers start to top £600 even outside of banking there has never been a better time to become a JavaScript developer.
Perhaps now it is obvious why Constructor Labs is 100% committed to training JavaScript developers. Every week we have developers from some of the best companies in London coming to visit our students. We are one of the only London coding bootcamps focused exclusively on JavaScript and that is the main skill companies are looking for today.
Dmitri Grabov is the founder of Constructor Labs who run a 12 week Fullstack Web Development with JavaScript bootcamp in London. Next cohort starts on 29th May and fees are £3,000. Applications are open now.
