How we researched audience requests to put together a relevant program for FrontendConf 2024
In this article we decided to update the information for 2024. Tell us what has changed and what approaches we have remained faithful to. You will find a detailed analysis of market expectations and information about what topics are of interest to front-end developers today.
How we research the market
We approach the conference program as if it were a product. This means that it must meet the needs of listeners. Therefore, before the start of collecting applications Call of Papers and program definitions, we make sure to do a lot of research.
The research is carried out in two stages:
Qualitative research with companies in the market. This is CustDev, in which we find out what is interesting to a business, what pain points and problems it has in development. This year, such companies as DomKlik, Sibur, Sber, Yandex, Skillbox, UseTech, Positive Technologies, Selectel, Cyan, Kontur, Alfa, Avito, VK, Rosbank, Samokat, UMoney participated in CustDev.
Quantitative Research. This is how we find out which topics from CustDev are most interesting to specialists. This year more than 200 people took part in the survey.
In two stages, we find out what is most interesting to our target audience this year. So we make a list of future topics and look for speakers for it. We take some experts from applications received through Call of papers. But we are looking for some experts specifically – those who can really talk well about a specific rare or complex topic. The core of the program is compiled in this way.
Now let’s take a closer look at our audience and what topics interest them.
Determining the conference audience
We segment the conference audience by experience, size and type of employing companies.
The core of our audience, as in previous years, still consists of middles (42%) and seniors (24%).
Most specialists come from large teams of 50 or more people – 46%.
The majority of specialists work in food companies—almost 62%. Outsourcing is in second place with 12.3%. Startups and digital agencies are in the minority.
This is how we identified the core audience – experienced specialists who work in large product companies. Having determined this, the next step is to study which topics interest our audience most.
We identify interests
Defining topics is always the most difficult and interesting thing. There is a lot of data, as well as sections. We try to identify key topics that interest front-end developers and the companies they work for.
We included 71 topics in the survey. Participants were asked to indicate their level of interest for each. The result is this difficult-to-read graph.
To understand the overall picture, we decided to look at the top 15 topics that aroused interest among more than 60% of the audience.
These were the topics that we ranked from most interesting to least interesting:
Scalable architecture;
Pragmatic architecture;
Code and rendering performance;
Modern language syntax, API;
Redundant Architecture and Feature-Sliced Design;
Debugging and analysis of low-performance code;
Code Review;
Microfrontend;
TypeScript: integration cannot be thrown away;
Metrics and performance measurement;
Code quality and technical debt;
Reusable components: flexibility vs specialization;
Reactivity;
PWA;
Migration.
The general graph shows that some topics are most popular among a certain class of specialists. For example, the topic of code quality and technical debt worries team leads 25% more than others. And leads are much less concerned about performance, debugging and Typescript, which is logical. After all, team leads are more involved in process management. Performance and debugging are a more relevant topic for technical leads and developers.
On the other side of the list, we took the top 8 least popular topics that scored less than 40%.
The list included the following topics:
Accessibility
Compiled languages;
Application of ML in a product;
Multi-stack;
WASM;
Semver/changelog, automation;
Bun;
Trunk-Based Development.
The most offensive thing is to see Accessibility in this list, which is not in demand at all among leads.
The result is a general picture that shows the direction of interest for each topic. Now let's take a closer look at the individual groups – this year there were seven of them:
architecture;
design;
communication and processes;
prospects;
performance;
technologies;
holywars.
If we add up the interest in each of the topics of these groups, we get the following distribution:
architecture – 59%;
communication and processes – 53%;
productivity – 52%;
holivars – 52%;
technology – 51%;
design – 50%;
prospects – 46%.
Architecture leads by the most significant margin. We have been observing this trend for three years now. In second place are communication and processes, in third place is productivity. But prospects, new tools and trends are of least interest. This is logical, because solving problems here and now is more important than thinking about the future.
Now let's look at each group in more detail.
Block 1. Architecture
The TOP 3 interests include scalable and flexible architecture, pragmatic architecture and microfronts. It seems like it makes sense for big food companies with big products. Although we have been discussing these topics for several years now, it seems that we have not yet revealed all aspects and conveyed all the experience. The reason is not that they didn’t try hard – it’s just that the topic is too vast and is constantly updated with new knowledge and patterns.
“The theme of architecture is eternal. As long as we build applications, questions will arise about how best to do it. Applications evolve, contexts change, and new problems and challenges emerge. Architecture answers the question: how to build in a way that is efficient, flexible, extensible, testable, and reusable. Therefore, interest does not fade away from year to year. And we in the program committee are trying to satisfy this interest.»
Head of the program committee Gleb Mikheev.
Interest in code quality still continues. Note that code quality is of much greater interest to team leads than to developers. And this is logical. After all, the tasks of leads include quality control of issued solutions, working with legacy and technical debt, and onboarding new employees who need to quickly understand the code written by their predecessors.
The most uninteresting topics in the segment for all respondents were the architecture of boxed solutions and multi-stack.
Block 2: Communication and Processes
Soft skills remain one of the main points of interest in the block. It is logical that team leads show more interest in this topic (63%) than developers (51%). No surprises here.
In the TOP 3, the first place was taken by code review and everything that happens around it. It worries both team leads and developers – this is an important note.
Next come topics with approximately the same level of interest: competency assessment, interviewing, development speed, motivation and mentoring, cognitive perception, knowledge management and guilds, motivation, onboarding. This list covers almost all processes, so we can say that the audience is interested in everything about building processes in a team.
Separately, we note how much team leads are interested in the topics of competency assessment and knowledge management – 81% of surveyed leads highlighted them.
“It’s no longer news to anyone in the industry that to successfully advance your career and work well in cross-functional teams, it’s not enough just to program well. It’s good to see that even middle developers have become increasingly interested in the topic of communications and processes. This indicates an increase in the level of awareness in teams, a desire to better understand each other and work more effectively on tasks.”
Andrey Smirnov, member of the FrontendConf program committee
Block 3. Productivity
This category is of most interest to seniors (55%) than to others. But there is interest among all levels of specialists.
At the same time, the list of topics in this block has a very different level of interest – from very high to very low.
The TOP 3 topics include code and rendering performance, debugging and analysis of problematic parts of applications, as well as metrics and performance measurement tools. It is logical that these topics are of interest, because the speed of applications is not just a technical indicator, but something that really affects the quality and user experience.
“The performance of applications that people interact with is a complex topic. We can look at technical metrics, measure user behavior using various metrics, analyze network delays, monitoring logs, consider the structure and smoothness of processes and infrastructure, and so on. You can even turn to psychology – hello, perceived performance. Therefore, the demand for such topics does not dry up; new aspects are constantly appearing that are interesting to reveal and discuss.”
Member of the FrontendConf program committee Timofey Tiunov
Block 4. Holivary
This is our favorite category, because we ourselves love to cool down. And who doesn't love it? By the way, it has been noticed that middles are drawn to holivars more than others. But it is known that in a dispute the truth is born – apparently the middles expect to gain knowledge in this way. Well, disputes are always interesting.
The topic of architecture came up again in the top holivars. This time they decided to argue about redundancy and reused components. And Typescript suddenly made it into the TOP 3 of this block. Although it has already become a standard and we don’t really understand what to talk about. But that makes it even more interesting.
Specific technologies, such as React, and the contrast of entire development approaches received average interest in the holivar block. These disputes can be called eternal.
But debates about compiled languages and CSS methodologies turned out to be the least attractive for our audience.
“This year we decided to collect the most holivar topics among companies. And then find out from the community how much interest these confrontations generate. It turned out extremely interesting. It turned out that stories about Typescript, which had long been recognized as the de facto industry standard for writing JavaScript code, suddenly made the audience very concerned. Also of interest were default state managers and microfrontends – there is no consensus with them, but there are many questions. It is especially interesting that the fundamental architectural question of design systems “to make components flexible or specialized” was also guessed at in the TOP. And then the best front-end minds say “why are you talking about design systems, it’s already clear.” Of course, this may be true, but statistics show the opposite. This part of the study gives us interesting tricks, which we still have to figure out at conferences and in our companies =) We will now make collecting holivars a mandatory practice, and from year to year we will continue to collect and compare them.»
Head of the program committee Gleb Mikheev.
Block 5. Technologies
Team leads are the least likely to discuss technology, which is logical. After all, their focus is rather on team and project management, technical debt, the quality of the code produced, and communications within the team.
The TOP 3 by technology included reactivity, PWA, devtools and debugging. PWA, by the way, was popular even before everyone started discussing it because of the Apple story. But working with time zones, accessibility and WASM, it turned out, are not at all popular. Unfortunately for us, the topic of accessibility remains underestimated.
“We all came into development for the sake of technology. But over time, programmers get tired of them. They want to talk about more software topics. The topics in this block are best suited to juniors and mids. They want to talk about things that are close to technology.”
Alexey Avdeev, member of the FrontendConf program committee
Block 6. Design
Design is the smallest category we have, consisting of only five themes.
The TOP 2 topics of this small block included user experience and design systems. The latter have been discussed for quite some time, but still the need for expert reports remains.
But animations and the role of front-end in design are no longer so interesting. And the topic of accessibility at the design level shows much more interest than accessibility at the code level. This is good news.
“Compared to last year, interest in interface development and design has dropped. But the remaining points of interest are system design and user experience. This indicates that specialists continue to be concerned about global issues. We have been talking about design systems for many years and, it seems, we will continue.
Seryozha Popov, member of the FrontendConf program committee
Block 7. Perspectives
This is the last category and the one that generates the least interest. The block is losing out to pressing problems “here and now,” which is not surprising. But we believe that no conference should be complete without talking about the future. It is imperative to discuss trends, new technologies and prospects. This is important for planning and understanding what skills need to be upgraded and what technologies and tools to pay attention to today in order not to fall behind tomorrow.
In the entire block, only one topic aroused really high interest at 75%. This is a topic about modern language syntax and API. It’s not surprising, because it is in this area that the capabilities of the modern frontend are expanding from year to year.
All other topics are of much less interest. There are only a lot of topics related to ML that catch your eye – I am especially interested in the use of this technology in work, that is, the practical aspect. But new libraries, frameworks and even languages are no longer very popular and interesting to the audience.
It seems that more and more developers are focusing on improving what has already been done rather than introducing new things.
“Topics about prospects and future trends traditionally arouse less interest than pressing problems. But it is imperative to discuss the upcoming changes. The interest in new language syntax and APIs is understandable and explainable – these are relevant and used developer tools. But new libraries, frameworks and languages are no longer so attractive. The focus is shifting to evolutionary improvement of existing solutions, rather than to introducing something new. At the same time, AI and machine learning technologies are definitely on the crest of a wave of innovation, and their development prospects are impressive. We will thoroughly explore this topic both at the upcoming conference and at future ones.”
Head of the program committee Gleb Mikheev
What has changed in a year
We figured out what topics are interesting on the current agenda. Now let’s analyze what has changed in comparison with the results of previous studies.
Let us immediately note that we do not make such a study a template. Therefore, the results cannot be compared one to one. But if we compare the TOP topical topics of last year and this year, we can draw the following conclusions:
Architecture and performance are still at the top. These topics are of most concern to all categories of developers.
Soft skills topics remained at approximately the same level as last year. But there are also changes: the current agenda has moved from a focus on self-development to the development of teams and processes as a whole.
There has been a strong interest in the use of neural networks in products and the development process itself.
Design systems and PWAs were popular last season, but this year interest in them has grown.
There are also several large topics that were popular last year and practically did not figure in this year – these are algorithms, CSS and HTML, and cross-browser compatibility. This is an interesting observation, because it seemed that these topics were eternal and it was impossible to imagine the conference without them. But it seems that we have already explored them far and wide.
“The effective and widespread use of neural networks with developed practices and approaches is still far away. The technologies available for this are not yet sufficient to solve the main issues of the Universe with their help. But this year we will definitely talk about current experience. Let’s discuss how we can already benefit from their use and what intellectual routines we can transfer to machine learning and artificial intelligence technologies, making our lives easier and our work more productive.”
Head of the program committee Gleb Mikheev
Finding out the key topics that concern modern front-end developers allows us to better understand how the development vector of a specialist or company coincides with market trends and tendencies.
Such research helps the FrontendConf program committee to better understand the market. Thanks to him, we can evaluate what the conference should be like so that more visitors can really benefit from it.
Right now we are putting together the conference program, which will take place on October 7 and 8. When collecting, we rely primarily on research results. Therefore it is necessary send applications for participation, if you have something to say about any of the topics above. But if you want to supplement the program with some topic not from the research or know who might be interested, we are waiting for your application and we will be happy to discuss it.
And to everyone who comes to us to listen and gain useful knowledge and interesting contacts – see you in October!
