This is part 1 of our 3-part January Look Back series, where we look back on some of the exciting developments at Educative in 2022. In this installment, we'll discuss the top 7 skills developers learned with us in 2022.
From ChatGPT to the metaverse, 2022 was a busy year full of ups and downs for tech. With a recession on the horizon, many tech employees — including developers — were affected by layoffs.
Despite that, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) predicts a 25% increase in the employment of software developers by 2031. Software development is still an in-demand skill that's worth the learning investment. Our active learning community here at Educative would agree as well.
In 2022, we were honored to serve over 1.6 million developers, developer teams, and engineering managers with high-quality learning resources. Throughout the year, our team and authors worked diligently to add 300+ new courses, Skill Paths, and Projects to continue giving developers a hands-on learning experience with in-demand skills.
Today, we'll be highlighting the top 7 skills developers learned with us and some of the most popular of our new courses, Skill Paths, and Projects in 2022.
We'll cover:
Top 7 skills developers learned in 2022
1. System Design
Acing the System Design Interview is crucial for developers looking to advance in their careers. With the growing prevalence of distributed systems, all developers, including junior developers, need to learn System Design. Similarly, companies can't afford to cut corners on System Design, or else they might end up in trouble (e.g., think back to how Ticketmaster's servers crashed during Taylor Swift's concert sales).
If you're unfamiliar with System Design, check out the The complete guide to System Design in 2023.
If learning System Design isn't on your radar, it should be. A lack of System Design skills can unfortunately disqualify even the most competent developers from their desired roles. In some cases, underperforming in the System Design Interview might still result in a job offer, but for a more junior role than the role to which you applied (an unfortunate occurrence referred to as "down leveling").
With the stakes being higher for the System Design Interview, we've been thrilled that tens of thousands of developers and engineering managers strengthened their System Design skills in 2022. These developers gained a foundational knowledge of System Design building blocks, got hands-on practice designing 13 real-world systems, and learned an 8-step approach for solving System Design Interview problems — all through our new comprehensive course: Grokking Modern System Design Interview for Engineers & Managers.
Grokking Modern System Design Interview for Engineers & Managers was the collective effort of a team of System Design experts, PhDs, and industry leaders. For a sneak peek at what it offers, check out the following sections:
- RESHADED: An 8-step approach to help solve any System Design problem
- Design TinyURL: A detailed walkthrough of solving a common System Design problem, Design a URL Shortener
With limited time in the day, it's always important to be strategic about your learning. In 2022, thousands of our learners used these new resources to plan their learning efficiently:
- System Design Assessment to gauge their System Design proficiency
- Personalized Paths to generate a tailored System Design curriculum based on current knowledge, time commitment per week, etc.
As you level up in your System Design skills, stay tuned for more System Design courses in 2023 — including an advanced one!
2. Interview prep
Investing in more comprehensive interview prep is more important than ever before. There are plenty of developer jobs on the market, but competition is high amid layoffs and the looming recession—you have to ensure you can stand out against the competition.
While we can't necessarily add more time to the day, we can be smarter about interview prep. That's exactly what thousands of developers did this year at Educative.
In addition to learning strong frameworks and foundations to ace System Design Interviews, our community has been learning a smarter approach to ace coding interviews (and no, it's not using ChatGPT).
Instead of drilling endless coding problems, it's far more efficient to learn to identify the underlying patterns and appropriate tools to solve a wide array of real-world problems. Our learners have been doing exactly that through our newest interview prep series: Grokking Coding Interview Patterns.
Grokking Coding Interview Patterns trains you on 24 patterns that will allow you to solve thousands of coding problems. It's available in the following languages:
- Grokking Coding Interview Patterns in Python
- Grokking Coding Interview Patterns in C++
- Grokking Coding Interview Patterns in Java
- Grokking Coding Interview Patterns in Go
- Grokking Coding Interview Patterns in JavaScript
Beyond the coding interview, many developers have been preparing for object-oriented design (OOD) interviews with our new course, Grokking the Low-Level Design Interview Using OOD Principles. Through this course, developers have learned to efficiently break down design problems and apply OOD principles by designing 15 real-world problems.
Interviewing itself is a crucial skill that even the most experienced developers have to learn (and re-learn). Interview skills deserve training even if you're not on the job market — after all, you never know when the next opportunity will come along.
3. Data Science & Machine Learning
Data Science and Machine Learning (ML) are incredibly in-demand, and that's not going to change anytime soon. The BLS predicts a 36% increase in employment of data scientists by 2031—a figure that includes Machine Learning engineers.
Data Science is a broad field that asks for many different skills. In 2022, tens of thousands of developers gained both general and specialized Data Science skills with our new courses and Skill Paths:
- Introduction to Data Science with Python
- Linear Algebra for Data Science Using Python
- Mastering Data Analysis with Python Pandas
- From Pandas to PySpark DataFrame
- Mastering Big Data with Apache Spark and Java
- Getting Started with SQL and Relational Databases
- Building Database Applications in Elixir with Ecto
And where would Data Science be without Machine Learning? While there was certainly overlap, just as many developers completed Machine Learning courses and Skill Paths as Data Science offerings throughout the year:
- Fundamentals of Machine Learning for Software Engineers
- Getting Started with Image Classification with PyTorch
- Mastering Computer Vision in Python with OpenCV
- Neural Networks: Beginners to Advanced
- Hands-on Quantum Machine Learning with Python
We have many more courses and Skill Paths in the works for 2023, so stay tuned.
Interested in Machine Learning? Find out about the doors becoming a Machine Learning Engineer can open for you.
4. Web development
Whether it's for front-end, back-end, or full-stack development, the job opportunities for web developers have been on the rise and won't be stopping anytime soon.
The BLS predicts a 30% increase in employment for web developers by 2031:
And the technologies for web development are growing perhaps even more rapidly than job opportunities!
In 2022, we saw tens of thousands of developers get hands-on experience with several through some of our popular new courses and Skill Paths:
- Quick Start Full Stack Web Development
- Building Front-End Web Applications with Plain JavaScript
- Building Real-time Applications with Phoenix & Elixir
- Vue - The Road to Enterprise (Front-end)
- Learn Front-End Development and Automated Testing with Angular
- Using the Python Transcrypt Transpiler for Front-end Coding
- Building the Frontend of Python Web Applications with Streamlit
- Building Scalable Applications with Thymeleaf and Spring Boot
- Reactive Programming with RxJava
- Fundamentals of Testing Using Rails
- Learn Node.js from Scratch
- Getting Started with GraphQL using Node.js
- A Complete Guide to Firebase on the Web
Do you know where your web development skills stand? Join the thousands of developers who gauged their proficiency and got a tailored learning plan with our new Assessments: React, Web Development, Web Development with Django.
5. APIs
The most recent State of APIs survey showed that 62.6% of developers reported increased reliance on APIs in 2022 compared with 2021. An even larger percentage (69.2%) of developers indicated that they anticipate relying on APIs even more in 2023 than in 2022.
Nearly all developers will eventually make an application that has to interact with APIs. So, learning about them is a worthwhile investment.
We've been happy to see thousands of developers proactively adding to their API skills with the 40+ API courses that we launched in 2022.
Some of our most popular API courses included:
We also kicked off a new series of API integration courses. These were especially popular among our community:
- Messaging: Automations with the Slack API in Python
- Payment/Finance: Creating Payment Card Programs using Marqeta API in Python
- Entertainment/Streaming: Integrate the Spotify API in Python
- Weather forecasting: Tracking Forecasts with the AccuWeather APIs in Python
- Google Maps: A Beginner's Guide to the Google Maps API
While many API integration courses have been in Python thus far, we're launching versions for other programming languages such as JavaScript soon.
Read more about getting started on APIs with our Beginner API Deep Dive: What is an API?.
6. Languages: Python, Go, & beyond
From beginner to experienced developers, every developer has to keep up with adding new languages to their toolbelt. This year, developers worldwide picked up both new and veteran languages.
The top 6 most wanted technologies in the 2022 Stack Overflow Developer Survey were Rust, Python, TypeScript, Go, JavaScript, and Kotlin.
Not surprisingly, some of our most popular new courses and Skill Paths in 2022 were focused on these top picks:
Python
- The Practical Guide to Python for Scientists and Engineers
- Pythonic Programming Tips for Software Engineers
- Pythonic Style of Programming: Tips and Tricks
Go
- Exploring and Mastering the Full Go Feature set
- Data Structures & Algorithms In Go
- Golang for Programmers
Rust
Of course, these aren't the only languages that are hot right now. The veteran C# maintained its position as 5th on the TIOBE index from 2022 to 2023, and Elixir has enjoyed a steady growth in popularity. Accordingly, these two new courses already saw thousands of completions in 2022:
To practice their problem-solving and familiarity with each language, many developers in our learning community applied what they knew while learning to avoid common mistakes in our new Brain Teasers series:
Our learners also used our new Assessments to help guide their language learning and determine areas for growth: C++, C#, Python, Java, JavaScript, and R
Stay tuned for more Educative courses on in-demand languages (including TypeScript) in 2023!
7. Web security
Cybersecurity threats will only increase over time, and the demand for cybersecurity professionals is increasing. (The BLS predicts a 35% increase in employment for Information Security Analysts.)
In 2022, we were happy to see thousands of developers learn IT security skills and step up against threats to cybersecurity through our new courses:
- Practical Security: Simple Practices for Defending Your Systems
- Cyber Security Best Practices for Developers
- JakartaEE Security Workshop
There are many benefits to the interconnectedness of our systems, but this comes with the promise of an increasing attack surface. Web security is an irrefutable priority for modern applications. From authentication to patching to endpoint protection, we've been proud to see so many developers gain an interest in building more secure applications as we move into 2023.
Other top picks
Every developer's path is different, and this list was by no means all-inclusive! Here are just a few more popular courses and Skill Paths that developers completed throughout 2022.
Engineering management
Mobile development
Cloud
- Cloud Computing Fundamentals
- A Programmer’s Guide to AWS S3
- Running Kubernetes Cluster using Azure Kubernetes Service
- Become an AWS and Terraform Expert
To get a tailored curriculum for your exact learning goals and skill gaps, get a Personalized Path.
Keeping the learning going in 2023
The beginning of the year is a good time to take stock of your goals. Whatever those are for 2023, we're sure you'll find a course or Skill Path that fits you at Educative.
If you're looking for a new job this year, you can strengthen your System Design and coding skills with our most popular interview prep courses:
And if you're interested in any of the other skills we discussed today, browse our full catalog:
- System Design courses
- Data Science and Machine Learning courses
- Web development courses.
- API courses
- Language courses (with our free "From Scratch" series)
- Web security courses
Have other goals in mind for 2023? Explore our full range of interactive courses and Skill Paths.
We've been honored to have 1.6 million developers and EMs hone their craft with us this year. And we're looking forward to another year of high-impact learning. Stay tuned for more exciting announcements in 2023!
Happy learning!
Continue learning about developer trends on Educative
- How to become a Python developer in 2023
- 3 challenging System Design problems for your interview prep
- 7 best API courses for 2023
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