3 Big Software Development Trends to Watch in 2014

Software is constantly evolving. Companies need talented software developers who can not only build cutting-edge technology but also stay one step ahead of competitors.

The CyberCoders team is all about staying innovative!

Here’s a sneak peek at three of the hottest new trends that you can expect to see more of in the software development industry this year (in no particular order):

Web Server Code Will Go to a More Asynchronous Model

Asynchronous Models help solve a lot of delay issues and reduce load times on web pages. In short, this model basically instructs systems not to do everything at once. “Whenever there are I/O operations that take time (slow SQL operations, writing to disk, or even waiting on web services to return information) they tie up threads on the server,” says CyberCoders Senior Software Engineer Cole Chamberlain.

“Instead of tying up threads when processing I/O intensive requests, the server sets up a callback to be processed when all the tasks it’s waiting on are completed,” he says.

So, this model is a huge time saver and maximizes server resources. We are also going to be seeing more Node.js, JavaScript and Ajax everywhere. Node.js was written as asynchronous from its beginnings, and has been largely influential in pushing this model.

Why now? “It may have been around with startups and smaller companies last year, but most enterprises will probably get to adopting it in 2014 if they are chasing the latest technology (and I would still say it's young on the .NET side of things),” Chamberlain says.

Open Source Software (OSS) Will Be Bigger Than Ever

Though Open Source has been out there for a long time, in 2014 we’ll see it grow to become more of a focal point for companies.

“Companies are moving their platforms into the open-source world because utilizing open-source software is free (for the most part),” says CyberCoders Executive Recruiter Gino Aielli. “Free software alleviates the corporate burden of having to pay thousands of dollars for software licenses for their engineering department.”

It’s slowly grown to become a front runner in the development of up and coming software. “Most smart companies are leveraging it more and more,” Chamberlain adds.  A huge benefit of OSS is the community that comes with it—all willing to catch bugs and contribute to code.“So OSS may have 1,000 engineers looking at code and making contributions whereas closed source could be a handful of people,” Chamberlain says.

Even Microsoft—the largest closed source software contributor—has warmed up to OSS with Nuget.exe and hosting CodePlex, Chamberlain adds. Granted, “some companies are hesitant to adopt open source software, the biggest reason being security and stability, but as open source software becomes more common, these concerns lessen,” says Michael Dreyer, CyberCoders Software Engineer.

E-Commerce Will Benefit Greatly from Data Science

“Over the years companies have been able to capture insane amounts of consumer data, but they have not had the means to intensively mine that data,” Aielli says.

The e-commerce industry is one of the biggest industries to be changed by software development—specifically data science.

“With companies capturing every transaction that an individual makes nowadays, they are going to be able to know our likes, dislikes, purchasing habits, personal preferences, etc... data science and business intelligence will give companies the ability to sort through our personal history and have a much more targeted advertising strategy to attract consumers in 2014,” Aielli says.

Check out 10 Most In-Demand Software Development Skills for 2014

 

Click here for great software jobs on CyberCoders.