S Top Conferences for Programming & Software Development

2021’s Top Conferences for Programming & Software Development

Staying up-to-date with the latest developments is vital, especially when it comes tosoftware and application development and programming. One of the fastest—and most enjoyable—ways to keep learning is to attend a conference. With thousands available, though, where do you start?

Like every year, we put together this directory of the top programming and software development conferences that are most beneficial to you, the programmers and developers. This year, we’ll continue to see most conferences move online. That means more people than ever before can take advantage of the benefits of conferences:

Professional development Exclusive speakers Cutting edge insights.

The biggest benefit in our opinion? The lower (or free) cost for online conferences make them more equitable; now, you can attend that conference that was always beyond your budget.

This directory will be updated as more conferences announce details, so check back regularly. To add a programming or software development conference to this directory, contact us at [email protected] with details include including the conference name, dates of the event, location, and a link to your event’s website.

For a wider selection of general IT events, see IT/Technology Conferences of 2020. For more topic-specific conferences, check out our round-ups on:

DevOps Conferences CyberSecurity Conferences Voice Tech Conferences And more!

(This article is part of our IT Conferences & Events Guide. Use the right-hand menu to navigate.)

Top Programming & Software Development Conferences for 2021

Oracle Developer Live Virtual Events

Dates: Various Location: Online

Previously known as JavaOne, Oracle Code one is arguably the largest conference for Java developers. Though Oracle Code One cancelled the 2020 edition, they have shifted their approach for 2021, turning the conference into aseries of live, virtual events for developers around the world:

In January, Oracle is hosting AI & ML for Your Enterprise. The session in March is about Java Innovations.

(If Oracle does opt for a dedicated event, we’ll post details here.)

DeveloperWeek Virtual

Date: February 17-19, 2021 Location: Online Cost: $100-$645

DeveloperWeek is one of the largest expo conferences for developers in the world, with regular attendance of more than 8,000 professionals every year. This year, DevWeek moves online at a significantly lower price point, and it continues to offer several separate events:

Workshops, February 17 Conferences, February 17-19 Expo, February 18-19 Hiring Expo, February 17 Hackathon, February 8-19

The conference is also broken into a variety of topical tracks:

APIs & Microservices AI & Machine Learning JavaScript Containers & Kubernetes DevExec World DevLeads DevOps Summit IoT & Hardware Product World BlockDev New Developer Technologies (Python/Data & Databases) Microsoft Ignite

Date: March 2-4, 2021 Location: Online Cost: $2,395

The Microsoft Ignite conference is Microsoft’s annual meeting specifically for enterprise professionals, services, and products Ignite offers its 25,000+ attendees priority access to technical training, new and innovative tools, and opportunities to network with peers and experts in the tech community.

Of course, the 2020 version moved online, and this year’s edition will stay digital, too. MyIgnite, as they’ve dubbed it, doesn’t have much detail out yet. But, take a look at all the 2020 content that’s on demand to get a sense of what you can expect this year.

ACCU 2021

Date: March 10-13, 2021, with tutorials on March 9 and 14 Location: Online Cost: 4-day conference starts at £285 for members; tutorials are priced individually

ACCU Conference is the annual conference of the ACCU membership club, but open to any and all who wish to attend. This year’s event is taking place online, with a flexible schedule so you can maximize your value.

The ACCU Conference has always had C++ at it’s core, but has, from the outset, always been about programming languages, programming tools and techniques, and programming processes. ACCU Conference is a conference by programmers and developers about programming and developing. Along with its C++ core content, ACCU Conference always has sessions relating to languages such as C#, D, F#, Go, Haskell, Java, Kotlin, Lisp, Python, Ruby, Rust, and Swift, plus sessions on TDD, BDD, and how to do programming right.

DrupalCon North America

Date: April 12-16, 2021 Location: Online Cost: Starts at $195

DrupalCon is the international educational event that unites the people who use, develop, design and support the Drupal platform. It is the premiere conference to hone your Drupal skills, connect with the community, and learn about the future of web technologies happening with Drupal.

This year’s events will take place online, and until the April event, you can continue to watch content from DrupalCon 2020 online.

DevOpsCon Hybrid Edition

Date: April 20-23, 2021 Location: Online or in-person in London, UK Cost: Starting at €494

DevOpsCon is a leading conference for everything related to Continuous Delivery, microservices, cloud, and Lean business. The 2021 edition is a hybrid, with both fully online or in- person options available.

Attendees of the hybrid conference can expect all the normal top-notch events, from speaker sessions to keynotes to hands- on workshops on the latest developments in DevOps, including:

Microservices Agile threat monitoring Continuous delivery with machine learning Cloud privacy And much more! PowerShell & DevOps Global Summit

Date: April 27-29, 2021 Location: Online Cost: $300

The PowerShell and DevOps Global Summit is an annual event featuring expert presenters and an opportunity for the entire PowerShell community to network and share ideas. With a focus on Microsoft’s PowerShell automation and configuration tool, the conference offers attendees the opportunity to engage with experts, product team members, and like-minded peers. This year, the three-day event moves online. Says the organizers:

While we know we cannot 100% recreate the in-person aspect of the event the program team is working hard to make sure this isn’t just a 3-day webinar. We are hard at work to make this virtual event as fun, entertaining, and eye-catching as possible.

This 400+ level event is an excellent opportunity if you’re working with PowerShell, Desired State Configuration, and related technologies—especially if you’re moving your organization toward a DevOps environment.

Facebook F8

Date: Events throughout the year Location: Online Cost: TBA

Facebook F8 is intended for developers and entrepreneurs who build products and services around the social media platform. In previous years, the event featured 50+ sessions, focused on all concepts related to the social media leader.

This year, Facebook is turning F8 into a series of online events instead of a single virtual destination. Sign up on the website to learn more details as it’s announced. (That way, you won’t miss CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s keynote, the highlight of every year.)

QCon Plus

Date: May 17-28, 2021 Location: Online Cost: Starting at $399

QCon is an international software development conference that helps software teams adopt new trends and technologies. This year, QCon is offering several smaller events, almost monthly, but they’re also delivering one big event: QCon Plus.

According to their website, “QCon Plus is not just another virtual conference, it’s the virtual experience where senior software engineers, architects, and team leads connect, learn, and grow.” At QCon Plus 2021, virtual attendees can expect to learn new software trends and add tools to your developer toolkit thanks to:

Shorter, well-designed and narrow-focused technical sessions Real-time collaboration On-demand access to most session videos, after the event

DockerCon

Date: May 27, 2021 Location: Online Cost: Free

DockerCon focuses on Docker and its support of next generation distributed apps that are built with containers. Like last year, DockerCon 2021 will be an entirely free, entirely online event, so the value it provides is open to all. According to their placeholder webpage, virtual attendees can expect

Product and innovation demos, from both Docker and Docker partners Deep technical sessions led by Docker experts, Docker Captains, and other industry leaders Community connection with global Docker enthusiasts

Apple WWDC21

Date: June 7-11, 2021 Location: Online Cost: Free for developers

The Apple Worldwide Developers Conference (WWCD) is Apple’s largest event for developers—it dominates the tech scene and garners the attention of press, industry experts, customers, and developers.

This year’s WWDC will take place entirely online. Free for all developers, WWDC21 will offer unique insight into the future of iOS, iPadOS, macOS, watchOS, and tvOS. Building on the record-breaking participation and learnings from last year’s online conference, WWDC21 is the time for developers to learn about new technologies, tools, and frameworks to help build innovative and platform-differentiating apps and games.

DeepSource Next ’21

Date: June 8, 2021 Location: Online Cost: Free

DeepSource Next is an annual virtual conference by DeepSource focused around the future of code reviews and the practice of writing good code. Listen to exciting product updates, keynotes, panels featuring some of the most prominent people in the developer tools ecosystem, and fireside chats from people you admire. DEVintersection (2 events)

Spring event: June 8-10, Orlando FL Fall event: December 7-9, Las Vegas, NV Cost: $1,599- $3,046

DEVintersection is an annual conference led by top Microsoft experts as they dive deep into new software developments and its intersection with technology. Featuring 100+ in-depth sessions presented by Microsoft engineers and other industry leaders, the 2020 conference will cover topics such as:

Azure Visual Studio SQL Server AI Big Data Security Mobile Machine Learning

Past speakers include: Scott Guthrie, Executive Vice President of the Cloud and AI Group; Scott Hanselman, Principal Community Architect for Web Platform and Tools; Julia Liuson, Corporate VP; and Charles Lamanna, Corporate VP.

UXDX USA 2021

Date: June 16-17, 2021 Location: Online Cost: Various packages available, starting at $49 per person

UXDX, the fastest-growing product development conference in Europe, is hosting its inaugural UXDX USA conference in June 2021. The mission of UXDX USA is to deliver real change in teams, helping you take a full-systems view of software development. The online conference will deliver live and on- demand content through: Case study talks Panels Workshops from global leaders

UXDX helps teams shift from working in projects to autonomous product teams delivering real business and customer value. It bridges the barriers between Product, UX, Design, and Dev to help organisations create successful product teams!

Open Source Summit North America

Date: August 3-6, 2021 Location: Vancouver, BC Cost: TBA Open Source Summit is North America’s premier vendor-neutral conference for open source developers and technologists to collaborate, share information, and learn about the latest technologies and innovations across open source. Hosted by the Linux Foundation, dates and location have been announced for Open Source Summit 2021, but no other details are out yet. Sign up to hear more.

Open Source Summit Europe

Date: September 28-October 1, 2021 Location: Dublin, Ireland Cost: TBA

Like it’s sister event in North America, the Open Source Summit Europe will take place in early fall this year. Open source developers and technologists have a chance to learn about innovations across open source.

Hosted by the Linux Foundation, dates and location have been announced for Open Source Summit 2021, but no other details are out yet. Sign up to hear more. Demuxed Conference

Date: October 5-7, 2021 Location: Online or in-person in San Francisco, CA Pricing: $49 for online attendees; in-person cost starts at $399

The leading conference for video developers, Demuxed brings together software engineers from the streaming giants of Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime Video, and many more. Demuxed is simply engineers talking about video technology. After years of chatting about video at the SF Video Technology Meetup, we put together this engineer-first event with quality technical talks about video. Expect topics on web-delivered content, but we also cover encoding, playback, and plenty other video topics.

UXDX EMEA 2021

Date: October 6-8, 2021 Location: Online Cost: Various packages available, starting at €49 per person

UXDX EMEA 2021 will take place as a hybrid event with online tickets and exclusive in-person tickets (limited availability). The conference will deliver live and on-demand content through case study talks, panels and workshops from global leaders.

DevOpsCon Hybrid Edition

Date: September 27-30, 2021 Location: New York, NY or online Cost: Various packages available, starting at $449 per person

Heralded as “The Conference”, DevOps Con offers preeminent programming on continuous delivery, microservices, Docker, clouds, and lean business. (It’s related to the DevOps Con Hybrid Event earlier in the year.)

This year’s event is hybrid, so it’s your choice whether to attend online or in person in New York. Attendees can expect information about the latest tools, technologies, and methodologies for building and maintaining a secure, scalable, and resilient software systems.

Top Programming Conferences of 2021

No matter which of these programming conferences you choose, you will surely gain access to some of the latest technologies and methods in the industry while understanding insights from the top experts in the world.