DEVOPSdigest

Recent advancements around cross-platform development and open source are making it an exciting time to be a .NET developer, according to the 2016 .NET Community Survey conducted by Progress.

"Over the last year, .NET has moved further into the open source and cross-platform space. These moves allow .NET to continue to grow and thrive within the enterprise, and are in keeping with similar trends in cloud and mobile," said Brandon Satrom, GM for Developer Platforms and Tools, Progress. "As Microsoft continues to innovate across desktop, mobile and web, our survey findings indicate that many opportunities lay ahead for .NET and the .NET developer ecosystem."

Key findings from the survey include:

■ Developers prefer the web as their platform of choice:

- Respondents are developing apps for responsive web (49%), desktop web (45%) and Windows desktop (30%).

- Over half of those that identified themselves as web developers are using responsive web techniques to create apps capable of desktop and mobile.

- HTML is the preferred markup language of 38% of respondents classified as desktop developers and 78% of respondents classified as web developers.

■ 74% of developers are using JavaScript within the workplace, and Angular is by far the most popular core framework among .NET developers (56%) followed by Knockout (8%). This is likely due to Microsoft's ongoing endorsement and commitment to the platform.

■ ASP.Net Web Forms isn't dead, yet … Quite a few developers are working on new apps (34% desktop web developers / 29% responsive web developers).

■ Excitement is building for cross-platform and OSS development:

- 38% of respondents think the opportunity to build and run .NET apps cross-platform is "amazing."

- 43% think that .NET Core being open sourced and cross-platform is a "dream come true."

- While Xamarin remains the preference among native mobile developers (62%), Apache Cordova is the top choice for hybrid/compiled mobile developers (43%).

- 63% of respondents won't touch a Mac, but 29% own iPhones.

■ Adoption of Universal Windows Platform is slow, but steady. The majority of respondents are still unfamiliar with UWP (44% Windows desktop devs, 58% web devs, 41% mobile devs). While 27%, 19% and 35% respectively are on-board with its write once, run everywhere capabilities.