Software Development Trends in 2022: From AI to EDA

So, how would a software development company in 2022 deal with these rising demands? As you prepare for a new product in 2022, here are the key software development trends to keep an eye on.

The laws of software development were changed during the COVID-19 outbreak. Development teams have been under increasing pressure to swiftly deliver new digital capabilities and develop more dynamic and anticipatory experiences for customers as firms transition to new digital business models and services.

For the most part, they delivered, but those heightened expectations will persist throughout next year and even beyond.

1. Top Trends: Cloud Development Environment Will Take Over

Development environments used to be restricted to physical devices in the office. This is no longer practical, with engineers increasingly working remotely and corporations wanting to minimize expenses by transferring infrastructure to the cloud.

The majority of the software development lifecycle is currently conducted on a developer’s computer, with relatively minor pieces executed remotely. Staging environments, automated builds, and live production apps have all been essentially replaced by the cloud. For a long time, the tech industry has been trying to tackle this problem. Microsoft opened up GitHub Codespaces to the general public in August. The service lets software developers who utilize Microsoft’s GitHub backend work totally in the cloud in their Visual Studio Code editor.

Amazon also has its answer to this challenge, with AWS Cloud9 enabling coders to modify and execute their code from the cloud.

It is expected that the adoption of these technologies will rise in 2022.

2. The Future of DevOps Will Be Scientific

In software development, DevOps emphasizes communication, collaboration, and integration between software developers and system administrators. Its purpose is to shorten the time it takes to deploy new features and upgrades.

As more firms recognize the benefits of this manner of working, DevOps will transition from a cutting-edge technique to conventional practice by 2020.

This will also result in more standardized DevOps processes and technologies.

3. Top Trends: Remote Work Will Become Permanent

There’s little doubt that things have moved faster since the Covid-19 pandemic, with the surge in remote work among engineers. This looks to be a long-term shift. The advent of remote work gives people more freedom and flexibility and also saves companies money by allowing them to hire people from other parts of the country. As a result, there is a significant need for people who can work remotely on contract-to-hire or full-time jobs from anywhere in the world.

According to GitHub’s State of the Octoverse study, whereas 41 percent of respondents were co-located at an office prior to the epidemic, just 10.7% expected to stay when it was ended. This translates to a 74% decrease in the number of persons who worked from an office prior to the outbreak.

In a competitive industry, the future of software development services depends on attracting and maintaining talent. This is critical for small firms that cannot afford to provide all-inclusive benefits packages to their employees but would prefer to have them live where they are most happy.

This trend will continue into 2022 when remote work becomes permanent in many companies.

4. At least One-Third of Enterprises Will Implement Event-Driven Architecture

The architectural style of event-driven architecture (EDA) defines systems as a collection of components that exchange messages according to a precise and stated contract.

With the emergence of cloud and microservices, event-driven architecture is gaining popularity in software development.

Developers can utilize an event-driven architecture (EDA) to deploy a lightweight publish/subscribe messaging system that decouples services by allowing them to communicate through messages rather than tightly connected APIs. More flexibility, faster development, and increased scalability are all possible as a result of this.

Event-driven architecture (EDA) will be the future of software development, with at least a third of businesses adopting it by 2022.

5. Top Trends: AI Bots Will Be Integrated into Nearly All Development Tools

Chatbots that employ artificial intelligence to assist you schedule meetings, ordering food and book travel are known as AI bots.

Healthcare, retail, and finance are among the industries where they are already in use. In the near future, AI bots will be integrated into practically all programming tools. Developers will be able to assist with code completion, debugging, and error reporting as a result of this.

AI bots will be a standard part of software development workflows by 2022, and AI will be used more frequently in software development.

6. The Collaboration Will Overtake Strategic Portfolio Management

Portfolio management was once a common method of ensuring that all strategic projects were aligned with the company’s objectives. However, as teams tried to agree on the appropriate course of action for each project, this approach frequently resulted in decision paralysis.

As more firms grasp the benefits of working together to achieve common goals, the collaboration will replace strategic portfolio management in 2022. Faster decision-making and increased team productivity will be possible as a result of this. Collaboration and speedier decision-making will be the hallmarks of software development in the future.

7. Top Trends: The Expertise Of Developers

Multi-disciplinary teams will become more common in the future, as part of a greater trend toward more specialization. This is already obvious in higher education, where students are pushed to specialize in a particular field, such as data science or cybersecurity. Companies that hire generalists rather than experts in a specific field take a similar approach.

Specialization and the rise of diverse teams will define the future of software development.

8. Documentation

Good documentation is one of the most important components of software engineering, even if it doesn’t appear to be so at first. Many otherwise very functional technologies are overlooked due to inadequate or insufficient documentation.

While some platforms, such as Vue and Laravel, owe a large part of their appeal to their extensive documentation, this is a reflection of the framework’s quality. It turns learning technology into a pleasurable experience rather than a feared ordeal. We’ve seen frameworks with a bad reputation for poor documentation make attempts to improve it, making it easier for both novices and more experienced specialists (e.g., Angular).

9. Top Trends: Services-Based Approaches Will Dominate in 2022

Today, services-based architecture is gaining traction. Several organizations, including Pinterest and Spotify, are migrating their apps to microservices.

A growing number of large corporations are following suit, citing numerous advantages over old monolithic systems. Because of their improved modularity, services, for example, enable enterprises to produce products more quickly.

As more firms rely on microservices and other services to produce products faster, services-based techniques will become the de facto standard in 2022.

10. Integrations

Integrations will become a focus topic for development teams as they strive to improve user experience and productivity.

Integrations with other services were becoming more popular in software products in 2018. Slack, for example, now has a Dropbox integration, allowing you to transfer files directly from your desktop into Slack discussions without having to leave the program.

As firms strive to deliver a better user experience by making it easier for people to obtain the services they require, we may expect to see more integrations in the future. Integrations will be one of the most important strategies for development teams to boost productivity and user experience in 2022.

11. Top Trends: Ease of Upgrading and Backward Compatibility

In 2022, backward compatibility and simplicity of upgrade will be two critical factors for development teams to consider. When a new version of a software product was published in the past, users were frequently required to update if they wanted to keep using it. However, as more companies create backward-compatible goods, this is no longer the case.

As more organizations rely on software products to run their businesses, backward compatibility will become more critical in 2022. Simultaneously, as development teams seek to improve the user experience, the simplicity of upgrading will be a critical factor.

Conclusion

We may never be able to forecast what will happen in rapidly changing times and settings, but we can maintain some expectations based on observable tendencies. Increased developer empowerment is a solid bet, whether on the corporate or open-source software project side. Many of the trends we’ve discussed are external representations of this desire to empower developers, and we should expect to see more of them in the future.