Imagine yourself in 1994, the year that Amazon, Yahoo, and Netscape all introduced themselves as exciting newcomers to the still relatively unknown web development marketplace. Would you have been able to predict the unprecedented success of these companies and many others in the upcoming Dot-com bubble in the late 90s/early 2000s?
If your anything like me, thoughts like these (and the subsequent exotic sports cars and a vacation home in Barbados) keep you up at night wondering: What if I had actually listened to that nerdy friend of mine in the 10th grade?
Alas, those sleepless nights will probably stick around for a little bit longer, but that doesn’t mean its too late to look ahead to the future of web development the way we see it: WordPress, Java, and Android. Check out our sweet infographic below!
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Internet Users by Device
Mobile, mobile, mobile, do we need to say more? As the evolution of the Internet continues, the appeal and popularity of surfing the Internet on mobile continue to dominate the market. Factor in the expected continued rise of the Internet of Things or any of the streaming media platforms (Netflix, Hulu, YouTube, Spotify), global mobile usage will certainly only continue to grow in the coming years.
The traditional method of surfing the web via PC is certainly still relevant, but with the ease and benefit of making a website mobile-responsive, having a site suitable for both is slowly becoming become the standard. Set yourself up for future success and embrace mobile-responsiveness!
Consumer Internet Traffic
Further reinforcing our first point about the rise of mobile versus PC usage, consumer internet traffic has swayed even closer towards mobile dominance, with recent reports indicating that internet time spent on mobile has now overtaken the traditional method of PC browsing.
While the term “mobile” includes all forms of handheld devices (tablets, iPods, smartwatches), it also indicates a longing for comfort and flexibility, two characteristics that are growing more and more typical of the digital age.
Being able to market and groom your product to your target audience is critical, and these statistics only further reinforce the notion of taking the necessary steps to please your customers.
Daily Exposure to Digital Media
Do you find yourself checking Facebook or Instagram when waiting for your morning coffee at Starbucks? While mobile browsing accounted for only 20 minutes a day in 2008, this has skyrocketed to just-under three hours a day by 2015!
While time spent using a traditional PC has remained largely the same over the last 10 or so years, this is also the result of an increased amount of personal computers both in the workplace and educational institutions.
People are spending more and more time each day when it comes to digital media. In order to take your piece of the pie, try finding the right niche for your audience, whether that is in the form of images, videos, or even the ever-popular GIF.
Mobile Device Market Share
While everyone is busy fretting about the size or colors of the newest iPhone, Android has quietly crept up and seized a large chunk of the market, with an estimated 52% of the mobile device market share. This number is only expected to increase with Android’s growing popularity among developing countries, in addition to a much stronger commitment to open-source development.
While iOS users still represent about 40$ of the market in 2015, this is quite a sizable drop off from the 61% rate they enjoyed in 2012. With Apple also releasing its own iOS-specific programming language, Swift, in June of 2014, there is an even greater division between iOS and Android development.
Popularity and Emergence of WordPress
It goes without saying that WordPress has established themselves as the leading solution when it comes to choosing which platform to build your site on.
First appearing in 2003, WordPress has taken the internet by storm, with nearly 25% of all websites on the internet currently enjoying the simple, yet sophisticated platform. While ¼ of the internet seems like quite a massive amount of websites, this is just a further testament to WordPress’s user-friendly model, supported by thousands of plugins as well as mobile device support.
The next closest CMS (content management system) competitor in terms of popularity is Joomla, another open-source platform similar to WordPress that is based on PHP and MySQL. While lacking the ease of use that makes WordPress so attractive for those not particularly web-savvy, Joomla is still quite popular, especially when it comes to specific extensions and advanced developer features.
What programming languages are popular today?
Google, YouTube, Facebook, Yahoo, and Amazon are some of the most popular and recognizable websites on the internet today, with the common uniting factor is that they are all powered by JavaScript in the front end, with some combination of Java, PHP, and C++ taking care of back end side of things.
While most of the list’s participants have stayed relatively similar even with the growth of Java and JavaScript, we can also see a heavy rise in Python, while on the opposite end, Ruby has experienced a pretty sharp drop in popularity.
While Java and JavaScript’s emergence can be easily explained by the reliance of a high number of web and Android applications on these languages, the rest of the changes are a little harder to explain. Whether it is through the release of new, exciting web development environments such as Node.js or the “trendiness” factor (which certainly exists within the web developer community), Ruby and some other mainstays such as C++ and Perl have suffered as a result.
The rise of jquery as a JavaScript library continues to confirm a large part of the internet’s reliance on JavaScript, and with jquery also being highly mobile compatible, this just continues to remind us of the importance of being updated with the times, whether we are talking about programming languages, website platforms, or even social media (yeah, MySpace still exists!!).
Conclusion
So, what the heck does this all mean? Well, as you can see that while overall internet usage in a global sense has seemingly reached a plateau, there is still quite a fair amount of potential growth in terms of mobile connectivity, especially when it comes to Android devices.
With WordPress also shaping up its platform to be as mobile-friendly as possible, it will be only a matter of time before most of the sites on the internet will also be mainly accessed from a mobile device.
Going hand in hand with the rise of mobile is the use of Java in Android Development, leading the world’s most popular programming language to even greater heights. Looking to get into web development? Learn Java!
With the continuing explosion of social media (Instagram and Snapchat being the main benefactors over the past couple years) coupled with an increased reliance on mobile streaming services such as YouTube and Netflix, the need to familiarize yourself with why and where WordPress, Java, and Android are heading is undeniable.
