13 million developers are registered with Apple. How many of those are professional coders and how many are just taking advantage of the developer program’s freebies? We don’t know, but we believe most are not professional coders. If they were, then 65 percent of self-identified developers would be coding for Apple-based systems (based on Horace Dediu’s analysis, updated with 2015 Evans Data info saying there are 20 million developers worldwide). App development, particularly for mobile devices, has democratized coding, with many people now identifying as non-professional programmers. According to a Vision Mobile survey, 12-20% of developers consider themselves to be hobbyists, but even more consider themselves as business people trying to create apps to for-profit and commission. These self-identified developers are more business people rather than coders, but who are we to judge?
