Software Development Trends To Watch in 2022: From AI to EDA

During the COVID-19 epidemic, the rules of software development were altered. With businesses moving to new digital business models and services, development teams have been under mounting pressure to rapidly produce new digital capabilities and develop more dynamic and anticipatory experiences for customers than ever before.

They came through for the most part, but those higher standards will continue into next year and may well endure beyond.

So, how will a software development company address these increasing demands in 2022? Here are the essential software development trends to watch in 2022 as you prepare for a new product.

1. Cloud Development Environment Will Take Over

In the past, development environments were localized on physical machines in the office. But with developers increasingly working remotely, and businesses looking to cut costs by moving infrastructure to the cloud, this is no longer feasible.

Most of the software development lifecycle time is now completed locally on a developer's computer, with only minor parts done remotely. The cloud has largely supplanted staging environments, automatic builds, and live production apps. The tech industry has been working to solve this problem for some time. In August, Microsoft made GitHub Codespaces available to the general public. The service allows software developers who use Microsoft's GitHub backend to work in their Visual Studio Code editor entirely in the cloud.

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

DevOps emphasizes communication, collaboration, and integration between software developers and system administrators in software development. Its goal is to reduce its time to get new features and updates into production.

In 2020, DevOps will move from a modern methodology to standard practice as more companies see the benefits of this way of working.

This will also mean that DevOps practices and tools become more standardized.

3. Remote Work Will Become Permanent

With the rise in remote work among developers during the Covid-19 epidemic, there's no doubt that things have moved at a quicker pace. This shift appears to be long-term. The rise of remote work provides individuals with more freedom and flexibility and companies that want to reduce overhead costs by hiring outside their geographical area. In turn, this creates a high demand for individuals who can do contract-to-hire or full-time jobs remotely from anywhere around the world.

As per the State of the Octoverse report from GitHub, while 41 percent of respondents were co-located at an office before the pandemic, only 10.7 percent anticipated remaining in the workplace after it was over. This corresponds to a 74% decline in the proportion of people who worked from within an office before the epidemic.

The future of software development services hinges on attracting and retaining talent in a competitive market. This is important for small businesses that cannot afford to offer their employees all-inclusive benefits packages but would rather have them live where they are happiest.

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

Event-driven architecture (EDA) is an architectural style that defines systems as a collection of components that exchange messages according to a precise and predefined contract.

With the rise in cloud and microservices, event-driven architecture is becoming increasingly popular in building software.

Event-driven architecture (EDA) helps developers use a lightweight publish/subscribe messaging system that decouples services from each other by allowing them to communicate through messages instead of tightly coupled APIs. This allows for more flexibility, faster development, and improved scalability.

The future of software development will be event-driven architecture (EDA), as at least a third of enterprises will implement it by 2022.

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

AI bots are chatbots that use artificial intelligence to help you with scheduling meetings, ordering food, and booking travel.

They are already being used in several industries, including healthcare, retail, and banking. AI bots will be integrated into nearly all development tools shortly. This will allow developers to help with code completion, debugging, and error reporting.

By 2022, AI bots will be an integral part of software development workflows, and we will see more use of AI in software development.

6. The Collaboration Will Overtake Strategic Portfolio Management

In the past, portfolio management was a popular way to ensure that all strategic initiatives were aligned with company goals. However, this process often led to decision paralysis as teams tried to agree on each initiative's best course of action.

The collaboration will overtake strategic portfolio management in 2022 as more companies realize the benefits of working together to achieve common goals. This will allow for faster decision-making and improved team productivity. The future of software development will be marked by collaboration and faster decision-making.

7. The Expertise Of Developers

The future will also see the rise of multi-disciplinary teams as part of a larger trend towards increased specialization. This is already evident in academia, where students are encouraged to focus on one area, such as data science or cybersecurity. The same approach can be seen with companies that hire generalists but rather experts in a particular area.

The future of software development will be marked by specialization and the rise of multidisciplinary teams.

8. Documentation

Even if it doesn't appear to be the case at first, good documentation is one of the most critical aspects of software engineering. Due to poor or insufficient documentation, many otherwise highly functional technologies are ignored.

However, while specific platforms, such as Vue and Laravel, owe much of their popularity to their thorough documentation, it reflects the framework's quality. It makes learning technology an enjoyable rather than a dreaded adventure. We've seen frameworks with a reputation for having insufficient documentation make efforts to improve the documentation, making it easier for both beginners and more seasoned experts (e.g., Angular).

9. Services-Based Approaches Will Dominate in 2022

Services-based architecture is already gaining popularity today. Several companies, including Pinterest and Spotify, are transitioning to microservices for their applications.

An increasing number of large enterprises are also making the same move because it offers many benefits over traditional monolithic architectures. For instance, services allow organizations to develop products faster due to increased modularity.

Services-based approaches will become the de facto standard in 2022 as more companies rely on microservices and other services to develop products faster.

10. Integrations

Integrations will become a focal point for development teams to improve the user experience and increase productivity.

In 2018, integrations with other services were already becoming commonplace in software products. For example, Slack is now integrated with Dropbox, which means that you can upload files directly from your desktop into Slack chats without leaving the app.

We can expect to see more integrations in the future as companies seek to provide a better user experience by making it easier for users to access the services they need. In 2022, integrations will be critical ways that development teams improve productivity and user experience.

11. Ease of Upgrading and Backward Compatibility

Backward compatibility and ease of upgrading will be two important considerations for development teams in 2022. In the past, when a new version of a software product was released, users were often forced to upgrade if they wanted to continue using the product. However, this is no longer the case as many companies release backward-compatible products.

Backward compatibility will become increasingly important in 2022 as more companies rely on software products to run their businesses. At the same time, ease of upgrading will also be an essential consideration for development teams as they work to improve the user experience.

Conclusion

We may never predict what will happen in fast-changing times and conditions, but there are certain expectations based on observable trends that we can maintain. It's a safe bet to anticipate increased developer empowerment, either corporate or open-source software project sides. Many of the trends we've described are outward manifestations of this desire to empower developers, and as a result, we can expect them to appear more frequently going forward.