“Citizen” has evolved to refer to a consumer-level or informally trained individual who participates in the formal functions of a profession. The citizen developer will typically write programs and/or modifications to existing programs and post the results on social networks and various Internet-based forums.
Corporations have been encouraging the citizen developers in their ranks by having their IT teams provide them with tools to develop new programs in an effort to stay ahead of their competition. As the potential of end-user application development is realized, the demand for citizen developers grows. There may come a time in the future when apps created by citizen developers make up the majority of programs used in the corporate world.
This infographic (Source), created by the University of Alabama at Birmingham highlights the citizen developer from a corporate perspective as well as predicts the job growth outlook and demand for these skills.
