Creating applications in the modern business world takes more than simply being able to write code. Understanding the full lifecycle and the context of where code is running is imperative to ensuring the successful deployment of an application.
Being a developer is helpful; being a developer in the cloud is an asset.
Consider the following questions:
Do your development environments often lack consistency? Developers often set up their own environments and have their own toolsets – can we leverage the cloud for collaborative development with consistent environments?
Does your developer fully understand the context of how the application is to function alongside the CI (continuous integration) pipeline around it? How can we use the cloud to expose developers to more tools outside of coding, while simultaneously providing them with an area to develop?
The benefits of coding in the cloud
Having an application natively running within the cloud is the goal for most modern businesses. But lifting and shifting apps from local into the cloud is a laborious and error-prone process, so instilling the foundational ability to code within the cloud is becoming essential for any developer in modern IT. Ensure developers have the skills to perform their actions, and provide them with the toolset to do so.
Enabling developers to code in the cloud opens up a multitude of options, easy collaboration, accessibility and environment consistency, to name a few benefits. A massive benefit is the ecosystem provided by cloud vendors such as AWS, Azure and GCP. This can facilitate the end-to-end development and release of code through their numerous services, allowing for a more streamlined, efficient method of product lifecycle management.
Pair this with developers being able to develop, build and test their code in the exact context of where an application is to run, and it provides a number of very clear advantages – one of which is the environment management within the cloud. Developers can customise their environment with whatever they need; they can run their toolset without having to worry about the underlying server tech that is running behind the scenes.
Coding in the cloud unlocks a new level of speed for businesses that they may not have experienced previously. Having an IDE (integrated development environment) within the environment that closely replicates production on the cloud, allows for a much easier development and debugging system. This then expedites the speed of deployment due to the already-present development within the cloud, alongside the collaborative nature of cloud development.
Understanding the benefits of coding in the cloud and adopting the practice as early as possible is pivotal for businesses in the development space. The immediate effects of reduced running costs, shared responsibility and environment management within the cloud cascades down to all functions within IT. As the titans of the cloud build more and more features to include within their ecosystem, the capabilities of development within this context increases in parallel. Developers can code within the cloud and become more than developers.
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Devdatta Gonsai