Distributed compute led to a new way of software development, as code became cloud native and open source created a software community without borders. Now, the COVID-19 pandemic is propelling the world into a more distributed way of life, with remote-first changing the work culture — possibly forever.

That spills over into software development, as the demand for tools to enable the online lifestyle are in high demand — meaning increasing output is a primary concern in the development community.

“When I look at where we are as an industry, it’s all about productivity,” said James Governor (pictured), co-founder at software development analyst firm RedMonk. “There are plenty of interesting new platforms. [But] I’m less interested in microservices than I am in distributed work. I’m interested in what are the tools that are going to enable us to become more productive, solve more problems, build more applications, and get better at building software.”

Governor spoke with John Furrier, host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio, during DockerCon Live. They discussed Governor’s keynote speech during the event, which covered trends in software development and their importance to the developer community. (* Disclosure below.)

Open is the way, but it’s not the life

Open-source software is successful purely because it is a productive and accessible way to package technology, according to Governor. Rather than debating the merits of open versus proprietary, he said, “what matters is how easy you make things for people to do their work.”

Developers choose tools and services by how productive they are, rather than their licensing philosophy, Governor added. “Nobody worries about whether Amazon Lambda is proprietary. They just know that they can build companies, or businesses, or business processes on it,” he stated.

Lack of diversity within the developer community is an urgent problem that is impacting the number of developers available, according to Governor. “The graph is pretty clear,” he said. “Women are not welcomed in tech, and that means we’re wasting 50% of available resources.”

Remote tools such as Microsoft Corp.’s Visual Studio Codespaces and Amazon Web Services Inc.’s Cloud9 platform can help developers manage their work-life balance. Governor also mentioned the Satellite demo of Codespaces by Allison McMillan, director of engineering at GitHub. “It was all about, ‘I want to be able to put the kids to bed for a nap and then go code,’” he said.

It’s not just women who are helped by remote operations. A large number of developers or want-to-be developers are prohibited from traveling as a result of expense, family responsibilities, or visa restrictions, meaning there are many who would attend conferences and training sessions but can’t. Again, this is a resource going to waste, according to Governor.

“We need an industry reset,” he stated. “We need to travel less. We need to do better work. And we need to be more welcoming.”

GitOps, deployment tools, and productivity management

There are three main areas where Governor is currently focusing his research time. The first is GitOps. This is the name for the process of documentation that uses Git as a system of record. By creating an audit trail and transaction log, development teams can track changes and create a sense of compliance.

“Developers aren’t off randomly making changes,” Governor said. “The idea of everything has to be through a pull request; that automation model is super interesting to me.”

The second area is innovations in deployment. “The only environment that really matters is where the rubber meets the road,” Governor said.

He discussed the theory behind progressive delivery, where live deployment occurs in stages starting in a location where roll-out problems won’t have much impact. “It’s the idea that maybe you roll something out to your employees first,” he said. “Maybe you are in California and you roll something out in Tokyo knowing that not many people are using that service.”

The third area Governor is researching is the convergence of software development and product management. “Companies that are crushing it in the digital economy … have such a strong product management focus,” he said. “Everything is driven by product managers that understand technology, and that’s an exciting shift.”

Here’s the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of DockerCon Live — and you can follow Governor @monkchips for developer community news. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for DockerCon Live. Neither Docker Inc., the sponsor for theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE