When we talk about developers and their professional interests, a lot of the discussion focuses on emerging tech such as artificial intelligence (A.I.), machine learning, or even blockchain. But a new study shows that an old tech standby is truly drawing devs' interest. Developer Economics recently published a study backed by responses from more than 20,000 developers worldwide. One big area of study: Developers' relative level of interest in mature technologies. In the organization's plot-chart, DevOps actually came out on top, beating out quantum computing, drones, and other cutting-edge technologies when it came to favored disciplines among developers. It seems that nuts-and-bolts disciplines are still finding favor amongst tech pros. The second-most-popular technology was ‘robotics'; but as Developer Economics notes, the robots aren’t going to overthrow us any time soon, at least when it comes to developers advancing the technology:

There is lots of interest in robotics from developers but limited activity. 40 percent of developers expressed interest in robotics but only nine percent of them were engaged in actual projects.

An offshoot of robotics, drones, is also popular. Blockchain also found favor, and not because of cryptocurrency; Developer Economics specifically split the two technologies, and found blockchain to be more popular than cryptocurrencies. This underscores Dice’s own findings: 24 percent of tech pro respondents to one of our surveys said cryptocurrency was merely a proof-of-concept for blockchain. Another interesting takeaway from Developer Economics’ survey is that bots, by virtue of ‘edge’ computing, are not popular. It’s worth noting ‘edge’ computing is where chatbots and digital assistants live; it's a technology that major companies such as Microsoft and Google are invested heavily in. It’s possible developers feel less excitable about edge computing because they believe it serves larger companies without returning value directly to them. We’ve said before that boring can be best, so DevOps reigning supreme in this study is a good sign. It’s a discipline that’s necessary, and we’re also happy to see developers finding pleasure in the work.