Software development is a dynamic field. With the bid to make life easier and edgier, brilliant developers are coming up with new stuff and advanced tech solutions now and then. The last year pleasantly surprised us with the glorious foray of predictive analytics, chatbots, various AI-infused solutions and more, and 2017 will see a stronger adaptation and integration of such offerings into our daily lives. So, what are the top software development trends in 2017?
Let's take a sneak-peek:
- Chatbots will rule
Chatbots have already made their entry into our world, but this year we will witness an increased integration of this latest wonder into our lives. One of the main reasons why the big tech loves chatbots so much is that these intelligent customer-facing bots have been able to bring in a new edge of communication. It is perfectly in tune with the latest trend of communicating mostly with messaging apps instead of social media. These state-of-the-art cognitive tools are designed to read up facial expressions, fathom human emotions as well as learn new skills. There is little wonder that biggies such as Quartz, American Express, Facebook and of course Snapchat get more interested in chatbots. It won't be too exaggerating to say that chatbots will soon blur off the line between human and computer operators.
- PaaS to dominate the cloud world
The cloud has always been hailed for its great prowess to facilitate access across mobile and remote workforce. Businesses are increasingly taking to the cloud, yet they keep voicing worries about security and control losses. However, according to tech gurus, these worries will go in 2017, all thanks to PaaS. In fact, PaaS solutions are all set to accelerate the cloud growth to a newer level by enabling users with a smooth running and management of applications in the cloud with no need to create associated infrastructure and algorithms. As the AI-based predictive analytics and other complex solutions start gaining strength, businesses will soon realize complexity of designing them in-house and instead will start counting on modern PaaS solutions.
- Open source will get even more popular
The open source culture is nothing new but given its timeless appeal, this year too we will see a steadier incorporation of the open-source development, even at a larger scale. The open-source method always makes it easier to scale up solutions across a business and to incorporate the latest plug-ins. As the demand for open-source development is on the rise with each passing year, 2017 is expected to witness more and more solutions built on popular open-source platforms such as Linux. Unleashing open-source enables companies to create and evolve further, in tune with the latest demands and trends. It's due to the superior flexibility of the open-source that custom software development companies mostly prefer these platforms to tailor solutions to every customer's specific demand.
- Software development will focus more on business development
Running a business involves a whole lot of functions - there are customers to manage, tasks to be assigned, project planning to be made, and of course workforce to be monitored. All these responsibilities take a great share of time from the principal business tasks like formulating business strategies. This is why modern software developers are more focused on developing line-of-business software such as enterprise resource planning and customer relationship management to save time and energy for business executives. The trend is now to run effectively automated businesses.
- Google's Go to make a stir
The most popular programming language of 2016, Google's Go is expected to rise this year. According to experts, the tech world is smitten by its high performance, amazing simplicity, in-built support and great efficiency – and 2017 is sure to witness great strides by the latest Google wonder. Besides, Go is way easier to learn compared to many other programming languages.
- Globalized software development teams
The outsourcing culture has been doing the rounds for quite some time now but the overall trend is positive. All credit goes to the advanced communication tools such as video conferencing facilities, automated software testing options, etc. – all of which have facilitated easier connection between freelancers worldwide working remotely from the main business location.
2017 is surely going to be an exciting chapter for the software development world.