Himanshu PatelIn a rapidly evolving world governed by the innovations bestowed upon global sectors through the empowering creativity of technology and its bleeding edge solutions, keeping up with the latest software trends has become crucial to ensure better sustainability against other competitors. As software development continuously improves and assists the industry in developing more user-focused and intuitive UI and UX with enhanced functionalities, insights into such software development trends are vital to understanding what the future holds for businesses globally.
Helping you keep up with these everchanging trends in software and technology, we have curated this list to help you keep in touch with the top software development trends currently influencing software development globally:-
1. Artificial Intelligence and Integration of Machine Learning
AI and ML have become household terminology due to their indispensable inclusion in our daily lives. This rapidly growing endeavour is fueled by how easy it makes doing everyday mundane tasks for most people. But alongside this, it is also helping the creation of intelligent advanced applications that can adapt and evolve. Used across various domains, AI and ML can help in predictive analysis, natural language processing, replicating routines, and even recognizing images.
Case Study:- Netflix uses AI and ML algorithms to properly analyze user behavior trends on their platform and suggest recommendations to increase user engagement and retention. This is a fairly standard trend across the technology market, where tech giants like Google and Meta replicate such algorithms across their suite of social platforms.
2. The Rise of Low-Code and No-Code Software Development
As software trends like AI make it easier for everybody to access and develop software applications, low-code and no-code platforms have revolutionized this by allowing individuals to build complex applications with little or no coding experience. With visual drag-and-drop features and highly assisted mapping of coding architectures to simplify the process, these low-code and no-code platforms allow everybody to develop their software application.
Such software development trends facilitate access and foster a more inclusive developer community by popularising easy-to-use tools for the masses.
Statistical Data:- According to research done by Gartner, low-code application development will be responsible for more than 65% of the applications developed globally by the end of 2024.
3. Cloud-Native Applications
Online digital apps are a rising custom software development trend that leverages the wireless advantages of cloud computing to provide applications that are built and deployed completely in a cloud environment. This translates to better scalability, flexibility, and security, as cloud-native software is developed using microservices architecture and continuous integration/deployment pipelines for enhanced functionality.
With quicker response times and no local storage or servers required by the company developing the software, such software development industry trends are genuinely futuristic in terms of the functionality they help unlock for both the developers and their users.
Case Study: Music streaming giant Spotify recently migrated its services to the Google Cloud to ensure it can handle large volumes of user and music data while allowing better and faster scalability in the future to meet user demands from its growing platform.
4. Growth of DevOps Practices
Combining development and operations for a more collaborative and focused development cycle, DevOps ensures automated and continuous improvement throughout software development. Such practices aim to provide a much shorter development cycle as these two processes run side by side with one focused objective.
Hiring DevOps engineers has globally shown that better high-quality software has developed rapidly, saving costs and resources, becoming one of the top software development trends today.
Case Study: Amazon Web Services (AWS) has a unique way of employing synergic DevOps practices to ensure a continuous flow of new platform features and updates. This ensures AWS stays ahead of its competitors, offering bleeding-edge cloud services while maintaining the same standards of availability and performance across the board.
5. Surge in Implementing Cybersecurity Measures
A rise in technological innovations and their integration into our daily lives has also led to a massive surge in cyber threats, particularly for tech giants and emerging tech businesses. Robust cybersecurity measures and their implementation across companies’ software development cycles are slowly becoming a top priority within software development.
Integrating such security practices requires a practice called DevSecOps, an advanced version of the DevOps we discussed above that integrates security measures within the process. This has birthed a unique development trend of emphasizing reliable and efficient software development that is also sustainable and secure for users.
Statistical Data: A report by Cybersecurity Ventures explains that the global cybercrime costs for companies worldwide will exceed $10.5 trillion annually by 2025, showcasing a desperate need to integrate better cybersecurity measures for tech giants.
6. Rise of Progressive Web Apps (PWAs)
The ingenuity of Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) has combined the best features of web and mobile application development to offer a seamless user experience that does not depend on the device you are accessing the application. Establishing such software development trends allows fast and reliable applications to be built, keeping cross-platform and cross-device functionalities in mind.
The results? PWAs are sleek, optimized software solutions that offer offline working functionality and deliver native app-like experiences, including notifications and syncing, all through a web app that doesn’t even require the user to visit the app store and download a hefty application locally. Thus, PWAs are completely online software applications that behave as well as, or sometimes even better than, a native app on the device.
Case Study: Twitter’s PWA solution, Twitter Lite, has significantly improved performance while reducing the app’s data usage. The app even functions with limited internet connectivity on low-performance devices. Thus, the app has allowed a wider spectrum of users to utilize Twitter services.
7. Rapid Evolution of Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR)
Technologies like AR and VR credit their place in the top software development trends because of their transformational impact on global industry verticals like healthcare, gaming, real estate, and even day-to-day corporate meetings. With advancements in VR made by Meta and Apple, these immersive technologies already provide highly interactive experiences for people. AR and VR visualize 2D elements in 3D and offer immersive hyper-reality that blurs the lines between fiction and non-fiction.
Displaying such complex digital information in the real world, either by overlaying it through AR or providing an immersive virtual environment through VR, provides a new playground for developers to provide software solutions in this new space. Currently, these technologies are used for remote assistance, product visualization, and training in simulated realities.
Case Study:- An AR app by IKEA allows its customers to visualize how their furniture will look and fit inside their homes, providing real-life data on the look and the size of their furniture. This provides a better user experience for online shoppers and offers better conversion rates for IKEA with fewer returns, leading to an overall benefit in the efficiency of their business.
8. Emphasis on the importance of UX Design
Some software development trends are not completely new and innovative ideas but the perfection of an old one that lost its importance somewhere in the past because of a poor generalization of what makes a software product better. Such is the case of User Experience (UX) design, which is now an unrelated parameter when we consider user behavior and pain points.
Today, UX design is fast approaching, being one of the foremost departments in software development. It helps distinguish software and its functionality from others and is critical in deciding its popularity among users. Effective UX has been shown to increase user engagement and better conversion rates. This has sparked interest in businesses to divert a large corpus of their resources towards ensuring their software’s UI & UX development remains pleasing and engaging.
Statistical Data: A study by Forrester Research proved that emphasis on a well-designed user interface (UI) can increase a website’s conversion rate by almost 200%. In comparison, a well-designed UX can boost it up to 400%! This shows just how vital UX is in terms of boosting sales for any business in the world.
9. The Shift to Remote Work Post Covid-19 Pandemic
The COVID-19 pandemic greatly accelerated the adoption of remote work. It set a precedent for how software development can increase efficiency by allowing distributed teams to work from the comfort of their homes. Using effective remote work strategies and online project management tools, virtual meetings fostered a strong team culture across different time zones and locations.
Thus, remote work offered flexibility and productivity that were too good to let go for many software development employees. Effective remote work is thus an emerging software development trend that revolutionizes how people work, enabling an office-like setting in a virtual environment.
Case Study:- Gitlab is a fully remote company that has proved how remote work can implement perfected tools and practices to perfect remote work for all its employees. This has ensured the viability and benefits of remote work in software development, with extensive documentation and communication offering better productivity through this medium.
10. Blockchain Technology Adoption
Speaking of software development trends that gained popularity during the COVID-19 pandemic, blockchain technology gained mainstream attention due to the rise in cryptocurrency and NFTs. While both of these assets are currently facing scrutiny regarding their reliability, the technology beneath is just as useful and popular among software developers.
Blockchain’s decentralized nature has made it a great transparent option for security and data processing within supply chain management, healthcare, and finance. Blockchains allow developers to provide advanced encrypted security and improve process traceability while securing the source’s anonymity. It is one of the fastest-growing software development trends in the past decade of technology.
Case Study: Tech giant IBM’s ‘Food Trust’ initiative uses blockchain networking to enable greater transparency and traceability in the supply of food chain management. This helps improve food security while considerably minimizing wastage. This demonstrates how large tech giants can use this technology to enhance trust and accountability.
Conclusion: Software Development Trends Fostering Business Success
The process of how software development is conducted in the modern age now requires businesses to be up-to-date and remain relevant. All the trends described in this blog, starting with AI and ML and ending with low-code platforms, cloud, DevOps, cybersecurity, PWAs, AR/VR, UX, remote work, and blockchain, are defining the future of the software development industry. Hence, by adapting to these trends, firms can foster innovation and create better customer experience and sustainable business growth.
Read More:- Unlocking Key Features in Custom Software Development for Business Owners – Nectarbits
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
The top software development trends in 2024 include Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML), Low-Code and No-Code Development, Cloud-Native Applications, DevOps Practices, and Cybersecurity Measures.
-AI and ML are used for predictive analysis and enhancing user experience.
-Low-code platforms allow users to create applications with minimal coding.
Cloud-native apps offer better scalability and flexibility.
-DevOps practices ensure continuous improvement and faster development cycles.
Cybersecurity is crucial due to increasing cyber threats.
AI and ML are revolutionizing software development by creating intelligent applications to learn and adapt. They are widely used in various domains, such as predictive analysis, natural language processing, and image recognition.
-AI and ML enhance the user experience by analyzing user behavior.
-They help in automating repetitive tasks and improving efficiency.
-Companies like Netflix use AI to personalize recommendations, boosting user engagement.
Low-code and no-code development platforms are gaining popularity because they allow individuals with little or no coding experience to build complex applications. These platforms use visual drag-and-drop features to simplify the development process.
-They democratize software development, making it accessible to a wider audience.
-Low-code platforms reduce development time and costs.
-Gartner predicts that by 2024, low-code development will account for more than 65% of application development.
Cloud-native applications are designed and deployed entirely in cloud environments, offering better scalability, flexibility, and security. They use microservices architecture and continuous integration/deployment pipelines.
-Cloud-native apps can scale easily to meet user demands.
-They provide quick response times without the need for local servers.
-Spotify uses cloud-native technology to manage large volumes of user data efficiently.
The shift to remote work, accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic, has revolutionized software development by enabling distributed teams to work effectively from anywhere. Remote work offers increased flexibility and productivity.
-Remote work tools and virtual meetings foster a strong team culture.
-Companies like Gitlab have perfected remote work practices, proving its viability.
-Remote work allows access to a global talent pool, enhancing development efficiency.
