RedMonk June 2025 Update
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Welcome to RedMonk’s hot vibe code summer. What? You aren’t spending your evenings hoarding tokens and spinning up small hobby projects? Well I, Kate Holterhoff, for one, have been ALL IN skipping between platforms and seeing what I can build and deploy in an evening. It’s an absolute blast, and sucks me in the way only coding out a webpage can.
While it might not be everyone’s idea of a good time, I find AI-assisted coding completely engrossing. I am losing (finding?) hours fiddling with the interactivity, adding features, and debugging rss feeds. What is more, it's changing the ways I think and problem solve, as I feel myself defaulting to “I can build an app for that.” Fun stuff—just don’t run out of tokens! Those things are gold.
On the coding note, we’ve also been following a major architectural shift within Apple: a critical, large-scale backend service migration from Java to Swift in production. While, as is often the case, the promise of improved performance spurred this move, what interested many of us here at RedMonk about this migration story is its signalling Swift's viability for high-performance, server-side applications.
In other news, spring travel is winding down for the analysts. We’re in full follow up mode by continuing conversation with all the amazing folks we met on the road, and helping clients think through initiatives they ran past us in an inspired musing on the convention floor.
-Kate
Links Roundup
"Your deployment pipeline is only as fast as your debugging pipeline. If you can ship 50 times a day but can't debug what you shipped, you're not moving fast - you're just making a bigger mess, faster. The smartest teams ship understanding, not just code."
"While you might expect that Apple would automatically choose Swift, we were pleasantly surprised by how well it fit the unique needs of a cloud-based service like ours." The story behind migrating Apple's Password Monitoring service from Java to Swift.
A look at how Section 174 from the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, signed in 2017, is impacting tech layoffs now. The delayed provision now requires R&D salaries to be amortized rather than expensed in the year they are incurred, which effectively serves as a financial drag on our innovation economy.
Recent RedMonk Research
Automated compliance for software delivery - sexytime! Seriously, we are very interested in hearing from folks in enterprises about how they audit and comply across their software delivery lifecycle, and what they call this stuff. It's an important topic for engineering teams because compliance suh-huh-hucks. But for security and compliance teams it's absolutely something they care about. RM clients mentioned: Kosli
Step 1: Write about data lakes. Step 2: Fall down an Apache Iceberg rabbit hole. Step 3: Diagram dictionary encoding using Bluey episodes. The yak-shaving was real. Here’s a post Rachel Stephens didn’t intend to write about a couple different methods of Apache Parquet compression efficiency - Dictionary Encoding and Snappy Compression.
For years, choosing a CMS meant picking sides: a developer-first platform or a marketer-first one, but recently the designer-first CMS has gained traction. RM clients mentioned: GitHub and Microsoft (VS Code)
Steve O' Grady took a look at consolidation trends in the data platform and database categories. If you're curious about what APM and logging have to do with data platforms, then, give it a read. RM clients mentioned: Crunchy Data and MongoDB
Steve has also been chatting with a number of folks about this recently, which is the idea that APIs might become more important than the underlying source code in some instances, and as such represent the next battleground for those commercializing open source projects. RM clients mentioned: AWS, Google, MongoDB and Oracle
Recent Videos and Media Appearances
With AI models and technologies rapidly evolving, organizations face challenges such as unpredictable AI behaviors, data security risks, and uncontrolled costs. VMWare Tanzu by Broadcom’s Adib Saikali (Distinguished Engineer) and John Dwyer (Director, Product Management) join Kelly Fitzpatrick for a conversation about how AI middleware aims to address these challenges, streamlining AI application development by offering secure integration, model access controls, and compliance tools: What is AI Middleware? How to build AI-embedded applications with Tanzu AI Solutions
A short take on Fastly XCelerate LDN – who are some of the customers that are speaking at the event and what is the experience like? Why you should come to Fastly Xcelerate London 2025
Rachel Stephens is joined by Srini Iragavarapu, Director of Software Development for Amazon Q Developer, to discuss the evolution of AI agents in software development: The New Builders: The Evolution of AI Agents
Recorded live at Microsoft Build 2025, this RedMonk Conversation features James Governor speaking with Dr. Nicole Forsgren and Gene Kim about the future of DevOps in the era of AI agents and vibe coding: A RedMonk Conversation: Introducing Agentic DevOps
Exclusively on the MonkCast
In this conversation, Justin Reock, Deputy CTO at DX, chats with RedMonk’s Kate Holterhoff about Java development and message oriented middleware, focusing on Apache ActiveMQ. They discuss the importance of messaging in distributed systems, Justin’s experience writing middleware at EarthLink and OpenLogic, and ActiveMQ’s advantages for enterprise: A RedMonk Conversation: Justin Reock on Why Java Devs Use Apache ActiveMQ.
Ori Saporta, VP of Engineering & Co-Founder of vFunction, speaks with Kate about the evolving role of software architects in modern development practices. They discuss Ori’s experiences at BlackBerry, the importance of architectural observability, and the disconnect between architectural intent and implementation: A RedMonk Conversation: Ori Saporta on the Architect’s Role In Crisis
Matt Klein, Co-founder and CTO of bitdrift, chats with Kate about mobile observability’s challenges. They discuss how hard mobile observability is compared to server-side observability, the impact of privacy controls on data collection, and the cultural divide within organizations between mobile and backend engineers: A RedMonk Conversation: Matt Klein on why Mobile Observability Lags Behind Server Observability
RedMonk Recommends
This month, RedMonk recommends 3 alumni of the Developer Success Lab.
John C. Flournoy, PhD, applies quantitative and qualitative methods with formal process thinking and human-centered engagement to research socio-technical systems, driving thought leadership and unlocking team effectiveness. As Principal Research Scientist at Pluralsight’s Developer Success Lab, he led data-driven initiatives to enhance developer productivity, and he’s now seeking opportunities in applied research and strategic inquiry; connect with him on LinkedIn to explore how he can empower your teams.
Cat Hicks, PhD, is a psychologist for software teams and a research architect who builds world-class research teams from the ground up to create industry-changing evidence about what keeps software teams thriving and innovative. Cat is the founder of Catharsis Consulting, a scientific consultancy that helps engineering organizations transform with empirical science and human-centered evidence strategies. Reach out if you want to connect on open science for developers, evidence strategies, and ambitious projects to lift the industry with human-centered research!
Carol Lee, PhD, is a mixed methods behavioral and intervention scientist with expertise in how people thrive, adapt, and succeed during challenging or stressful circumstances. As the first Principal Scientist in the Developer Success Lab, she built up the lab's research strategy and capabilities, and led research and thought leadership on developer health, wellbeing, and productivity. Carol is now seeking opportunities to apply behavioral and intervention science to health, wellbeing, or developer experience; if you’re interested in bringing science-driven change to your organization, connect with her on LinkedIn.
D&I Applications for Monktoberfest Open
Our goal for Monktoberfest is to create a conference at which everyone feels welcome and valued. We are excited to help foster this inclusive environment through our diversity and inclusion program. If you are a member of an under-represented group in tech and would like to join us at Monktoberfest, please consider applying here.
Meet the Monks
Events we'll be attending:
Open Source Summit NA: 23 - 26 June 2025, Denver, CO
AWS Summit New York City: 16 July 2025, New York, NY
VMWare Explore 2025: 25 - 28 August 2025, Las Vegas, NV
Events we’ll be hosting:
The Monktoberfest 2025: 2 - 3 October 2025, Portland, ME
Our mailing address is:
RedMonk
411 Congress Street
Portland, ME 04101
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