I have never made a BTCtalk account before but I have been in crypto for a while.
qTrade has been around for maybe 2 years and they have been trying to get on CMC for a while, I think it is because they are lacking volume. They are a small operation with not much liquidity. You can go vet them on Twitter. But I agree that because of that, they are probably not great for newbies. Anyway, I am genuinely curious if there are other more developer focused exchanges because I have not seen any.

qTrade has become my favorite exchange in the last year due to their forward-thinking approach to listing projects. Lots of great hidden gems on there. You can find their listing guidelines here: https://qtrade.io/listing_guidelines

Are there any exchanges (or ones that haven't launched yet) that have similar guidelines/philosophies? It is a very low volume exchange and some projects there are solely listed on qTrade. Some of these coins' communities are looking for ways to get listed on higher tier exchanges. As it stands, qTrade seems to be incubating a lot of innovative tech, most of which doesn't have great marketing.