DevRel This Week, 26 October: Developers Ship Faster and the Friction Stayed

DevRel this week, 26 October 2026: Atlassian’s new report says 87% of developers ship faster with AI and 72% feel the same or more friction than before it. NVIDIA filled a free Berlin workshop with 500 people the weekend before GTC, OpenAI DevDay Exchange is in Berlin this afternoon and Paris on Wednesday, and Cloudflare now counts 10 million developers. On Thursday OpenAI switched off GPT-4, and Hacktoberfest finally said what the online stickers get you.

Developers ship faster with AI, and the friction stayed

Atlassian published its 2026 State of Developer Experience report on 20 October. 87% of developers say AI helps them ship work faster. 72% say they feel the same or more friction (the things that slow work down) than before AI. In 2025, 68% said they saved 10 or more hours a week, and this year 25% do. 65% regularly spend time correcting what the AI wrote (Atlassian).

60% say their company treats AI usage as a sign you’re being productive. 41% say they sometimes use it more than they need to because they feel expected to. Only 17% of developers, and 23% of leaders, say their company has an AI strategy that has been explained and put in place. Andrew Boyagi, who wrote the report, told Techzine “AI can help developers work faster, but faster code isn’t the same as better software delivered sooner” (Techzine, 22 October). ITPro’s write-up on 23 October added that half of developers spend at least four hours a week managing AI output (ITPro).

NVIDIA filled a free Berlin workshop before GTC

GTC Berlin ran from 20 to 22 October at the Tempodrom and STATION-Berlin, with Jensen Huang’s keynote (the main talk) on the Wednesday (NVIDIA). Three days earlier NVIDIA ran a free workshop for people who weren’t going. Build-A-Claw Berlin on Saturday 17 October ran from 4pm to 8pm and was aimed at students, startup founders and open source contributors. There were demos of agents (software that does a task on its own, not just answers a question), an agent competition, a panel of European AI companies, and a raffle for a DGX Spark, a small desktop AI computer (Luma). NVIDIA says more than 500 people came, and that Berlin was the last stop on a European Build-A-Claw tour.

The week before, on 13 October, NVIDIA promised the UK $250 million of compute (time on its chips, not cash) over five years for research into keeping agents safe, going to Imperial College London and two new research labs, BOLD and SOFAIR, through UK-based cloud partners (NVIDIA).

OpenAI DevDay Exchange is in Berlin today

Four weeks ago I wrote that DevDay was invite only at $650 and that eight smaller DevDay Exchange events would follow. The European ones are this fortnight. Berlin is today, Monday 26 October, Paris is Wednesday 28 October and London is Tuesday 3 November, each starting at 2pm local time. Bengaluru, Tokyo and Seoul have already happened, and São Paulo and Mexico City come in November (OpenAI). You apply rather than buy a ticket, and the venue and programme are only sent once you’re approved. The page says applications “are currently being reviewed, but please still feel free to apply”. The afternoon is technical sessions with OpenAI staff, workshops on Codex (OpenAI’s coding agent), and founders showing what they’ve built.

Cloudflare counted 10 million developers at Connect

Cloudflare Connect was 19 to 21 October in San Francisco. On the Tuesday Cloudflare said more than 10 million developers now build on its platform, up from 7.4 million the quarter before (Cloudflare). The founders’ letter on 27 September said “more than 7 million” (Cloudflare), so the number went up by 3 million in four weeks and I don’t know what changed in how they count.

The Cold Start, the live pitch where five startups competed for $500,000 in credits (money you can only spend on Cloudflare) and a billboard, was on the Monday. As of this morning nothing on the Cloudflare blog names the winner. The Connect week posts there cover a rewrite of the TypeScript compiler in Rust and protections for the PHP2Shell vulnerabilities I wrote about on Saturday (Cloudflare blog).

OpenAI switched off GPT-4 on Thursday

On 23 October OpenAI shut down GPT-3.5 Turbo, GPT-4, GPT-4 Turbo, GPT-4.1 nano, the May 2024 version of GPT-4o, gpt-image-1, o1, o1-pro, o3-mini and o4-mini, along with fine-tuned versions (copies trained further on a customer’s own data) of several of them. The notice went out on 22 April, six months earlier, and each model has a named replacement in the 5.6 family (OpenAI deprecations). Code written against GPT-4 in 2023 that nobody has touched since got an error on Thursday.

Smaller, and with no notice I can find: Socket’s free plan is now one developer seat with 1,000 package scans a month, where it used to say unlimited developers and repos. The next plan up is $25 a seat a month (Socket pricing, AgentDeals).

Also in DevRel this week, 26 October: Hacktoberfest stickers, GitHub Universe, Elastic hiring

Hacktoberfest has published what online participation gets you. Collect three virtual stickers in My Hacktoberfest by doing the activities on your participant page and a real sticker pack goes in the post. Ten stickers add a holographic one. Fifteen enter you in a raffle for a 2026 t-shirt or an Arduino Uno Q, a small programmable circuit board (hacktoberfest.com, Hacktoberfest Swag List). Stickers and prizes are mailed 8 to 12 weeks after October ends. The homepage now says 500 plus Fests, up from 217 registered on 20 September. On Thursday I wrote about the t-shirt I used to point people at and why I’m glad it’s gone.

GitHub Universe is Wednesday and Thursday at Fort Mason. One session is called “Still open: How AI reshaped open source”, with Angie Jones, David A. Wheeler and Priya Pahwa, on what happens to quality and governance “when bots can contribute at machine scale” (GitHub).

The hiring note in DevRel this week, 26 October, is Elastic, with Senior Developer Advocate roles open across the UK, Ireland, Portugal, Spain, Poland and Greece. The job is videos, open source demos on GitHub and writing for Elasticsearch Labs (Elastic).

FAQ

What did Atlassian’s 2026 State of Developer Experience report find about AI?

Published on 20 October 2026, it says 87% of developers ship faster with AI and 72% feel the same or more friction than before. 25% say they save 10 or more hours a week, down from 68% in 2025. 65% regularly spend time correcting AI output. 60% say their company treats AI use as a sign of productivity, and 41% sometimes use it more than they need to because they feel expected to.

When is OpenAI DevDay Exchange in Europe and how do you get in?

Berlin is on Monday 26 October, Paris on Wednesday 28 October and London on Tuesday 3 November 2026. Each starts at 2pm local time. You apply on the OpenAI events site, and the venue and programme are only sent to people who are approved. The page says applications are being reviewed but you can still apply. No ticket price is listed.

How do you get Hacktoberfest 2026 swag without going to a Fest?

Sign in to My Hacktoberfest and do the activities on your participant page to collect virtual stickers. Three virtual stickers get a real sticker pack in the post. Ten add a holographic sticker. Fifteen put you in a raffle for a 2026 t-shirt or an Arduino Uno Q board, a small programmable circuit board. Stickers and prizes are mailed 8 to 12 weeks after October ends.

Which OpenAI models were shut down on 23 October 2026?

GPT-3.5 Turbo, GPT-4, GPT-4 Turbo, GPT-4.1 nano, the May 2024 GPT-4o snapshot, gpt-image-1, o1, o1-pro, o3-mini and o4-mini, plus fine-tuned versions of several of them. OpenAI announced the shutdown on 22 April 2026, so developers had six months. The suggested replacements are gpt-5.6-sol, gpt-5.6-terra and gpt-5.6-luna, depending on the model.

The tools got faster this year and the week did not get shorter.