Software Development Trends in 2022

June 14, 2022

Making predictions is very difficult, especially when it comes to predicting the future. And in software development, there are so many balls in motion at the same time, things that are developing in large companies, new fashions that from one day to the next, bring us new things, that it is very difficult to predict anything.

Part of my job is to keep abreast of what is happening in the world of software development trends, learn about new things that are coming out, etc. So I am going to try to give you my point of view on what things I think are going to happen in 2022.

Some of them may be overlooked, others are impossible to foresee, and others that I have not mentioned even if they are on the radar because they do not seem interesting to me.

Let’s start!

Programming languages

Ok, we’ll start with the easiest. JavaScript, Java, and C # will continue to be the most used and most demanded in the labor market. But if you want to be at the end of the street and invest in programming languages with a future, you should not lose sight of:

Python, especially for Machine Learning and Data Science
TypeScript, for Web development. This superset of JavaScript allows you to program with fewer errors and more easily for the Web, leaving you with JavaScript at the end. It was created by Microsoft and it is eating the world, both on the Front (for example, it is the language used with Angular), and on the Back.
Kotlin – If native Android mobile development is your thing, skip Java and go for Kotlin (although it’s best if you know both). It is a very new programming language (10 years old) created by JetBrains (a European company, based in the Czech Republic), which greatly improves Java making it more productive and Google itself has placed it as the main language to develop on Android instead of Java.
Go – Created by Google and mostly used for building high-performance web services and all sorts of command-line utilities. It is estimated that more than 1 million developers are using Go as their primary language, mostly in Asia.
Rust: This language created by Mozilla is being used mainly for the development of low-level systems as a substitute for C and C++. It is already part of the Linux kernel, Microsoft is putting it into several tools and, although it will continue to be niche, it should not be lost track of.

Web development

In Web development we will continue with the usual suspects, that is, Angular (especially for companies, thanks to its great advantages for well-structured work and being able to incorporate people into the work team), Vue.js for its power and ease of use, and React because, although it is not comparable with the previous ones since it is not a framework but a user interface library, it is the darling of startups and alpha-geeks around the world. Either you love it or you hate it, but the reality is that a lot of people use it as it is one of the latest software development trends.

Within web development, other trends that I think will be consolidated in the coming months are:

Web Components: that is, to understand us, the ability to create your HTML tags with components as complex as you need. For example, if you want a powerful grid in your application: then you put a label and that’s it. The ability to do this is what made React famous, but browsers have long natively supported component creation this way, even though the API is quite complex. For this reason, a framework that makes it easy for you to create this type of component in a simplified way that is called Svelte is hitting it very hard and has traces of surpassing React in the future. At least it should ring a bell.
PWAs or Progressive Web Applications: they have been with us for years but it seems that browsers are finally getting the hang of them. They were intended as an easy way to create web-based mobile apps that could look like native apps and work offline, among other things. Now they are not only on mobile phones, but all modern browsers support them and facilitate their installation. Even Microsoft has incorporated them as first-level citizens in the Windows 11 store, so they are becoming more and more interesting, and if you know how to develop for the Web, they are a great tool to add to your resume.
WebAssembly: This is wonderful. Said in a quick and simplified way, it is a low-level language for browsers that allows you to interact with their virtual code execution machine using basic instructions, like the ones you would use in assembler. This allows any code that can be compiled for a conventional operating system to be compiled to work in a browser (with its restrictions, of course). So, for example, you can compile C or C++ code to work in a browser. What is it used for? The question is what is it not for? As it is standard and part of all modern browsers, previously unthinkable applications can be made by combining it with JavaScript. There are many applications you use today that take Web Assembly under the hood, and there are also many popular command-line applications such as FFMpeg (the Swiss Army Knife of audio and video) that are ported to Web Assembly. For me its maximum exponent right now is Blazor, a Microsoft framework for Web development that we have already told you about here many times and that allows you to develop for the Web using C# compiled to Web Assembly, opening up a new world of possibilities, and saving you from learning the frameworks I was talking about before (Angular and others). It’s been a long time since I’ve been as excited about technology as Blazor has. If you know .NET and C# and want to develop for the web, you should take a good look at it.
Serverless – Basically build small, coordinated web applications in the cloud that are infinitely scalable, charge by the second, and let you forget about what’s underneath: you automatically deploy the code and it just works. This would give a lot to talk about, and one day we can do it, but all the big ones in the cloud have it and everyone is using it. In Azure, they are called Azure Functions and in Amazon, they are called Lambda.

DevOps

I’m not going to stop here for long. I’m just going to say a couple of lapidary phrases:

1.- If you don’t learn Docker you will drop out of the scene sooner rather than later.

2.- The continuous integration of your projects is almost essential in any modern development company.

And if you think that these things have more to do with the IT department than with the development department, you will discover bitterly that this is not the case. Listen to me!

AI-assisted development

And here I can speak first-hand about 2 specific tools: the “intelligent” IntelliSense of Visual Studio 2022, which greatly improves that of previous versions, and especially GitHub Copilot.

Does this mean that we workers are going to be out of a job? Not at all, but with these tools based on Artificial Intelligence we are going to be much more productive. Although you have to be careful because they can get very big bugs. In other words, there are things that it does very well, but since it is a generative AI, what it generates is not tested and it may often cause bugs, some of which are not very obvious, so you have to use them wisely, of course. But soon, either you will start using them or stay behind.

In summary

Well, it’s been long, but I hope you found the software trends 2022 interesting. I have tried to be dynamic and to summarize the areas in which our company is most involved so that you can see what things are coming that can affect you at work and that you know the trends and movements that exist in the world so that you can get ahead of yourself.

In case you want to know more, you can connect to our developer team in Cloudester.

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