A Developer’s Take on The Next Decade In Software
It’s a new decade, and here at Ultimate, that means one thing...it’s time to pull out the crystal ball, and gaze into the unknown of what the next ten years might hold. Our developers have been hard at work, and have come up with their top 3 predictions for the future of software development, which has changed so much in the past 10 years.
The 2010s in software development heralded a great deal of change; some of it surprising. For instance, who would have thought that Apple would overtake Google’s wearable tech in terms of smartwatches? Or that Amazon would become the #1 cloud provider?
So, what about the future of software development?
Here are our top 3 predictions for what the future of software development might look like, according to our developer team:
Apps will merge with the web, in order to create web based apps in favour of responsive adaptive web design. This move will be undertaken in order to reduce costs, and limit user frustration, which arises due to the claustrophobic limitations of apps themselves.
Indeed, this trend is already happening in software. Consider the Google Office Suite, and its replacement of Microsoft Office. Rather than outmoded and single-purpose applications, soon, everything will exist on the cloud in an integrated and merged platform. We’re talking everything: services that we rely on, Google Office documents, communications, entertainment and more.
People who use Office programmes on a daily basis will benefit from seamless experience, no matter where they access the platform from, and it is for this integration and seamlessness that more and more apps are becoming web-based. This cloud-based change will remove the limitations of the device setting, and instead outsource the majority of the computation to the cloud to create a single experience for the user.
Gesture control is the second feature to watch in development, to really gain speed over the next ten years. For instance, taking the idea of what is possible with a mousepad or mouse, touch is limited: a click here, a drag left, right, or up and down. With gesture control for devices and apps, gestures are much more fluid and diverse, and have a greater capacity for use in hands-free applications.
Mobile phone companies are starting to capitalise on this: the Samsung S10, for instance, has this capacity now built in, where the user can swipe and interact using gestures on their mobile phone. In this vein, gesture control naturally opens up a huge range of what could be possible with interactivity, which hasn’t been explored ever before.
This gesture control will additionally make touchscreen devices more inclusive: for those who can’t necessarily tap or swipe but can make gestures, the inclusivity of gesture control will open up the possibilities of technology to many more individuals.
Finally, we think that social media will come to an end in its current form. After the shock of The Big Hack and the Cambridge Analytica scandals, social media in its current format is long-overdue a change.
As it has become more and more apparent to the normal everyday person just what’s happening with their data, use of social media has demonstrably changed. This continuing trend will either be a personal choice, as people keep turning away from conventional social media usage, or it will be enforced across bigger platforms. Data is the most lucrative resource on earth, which informs all aspects of targeted ads: after all, when companies have the real data of potential customers at their disposal, there is no need to market to them: companies can simply directly target them!
These three things are just a drop in the ocean of the possible changes that will affect software in the coming years. Have any big things you think we missed? Let us know your thoughts!
