What’s Hot And What’s Not In The World Of Software Development
Changing trends: Fashion loves, Software despises
How often do we hear a software designer sneering at the fashion industry? In the latter world, trends blow through like the breeze and that is something the programmers are not in favour of. Ties grow fat and then thin out again, pigments come and go, skirt lengths rise and fall like the tide. However, as far as the world of technology is concerned, precision, math, science, and rigour tend to be the dominant force over mere fad!
However, it would be wrong to say that the profession of software programming and development does not have any prevalent trends. The difference lies in the fact that in this case, ease-of-use, greater customization, and increased efficiency are more important than anything else. If a new technology succeeds in delivering one or more of these aspects, the previous generation of software gets eclipsed. Software development trends are governed more by meritocracy rather than whimsy democracy!
Software development trends: What’s hot and what’s not
Keeping in mind the nature of the software development industry, here we take a look at the trends- growing hot and going cold- that is prevalent among software programmers. I am fully aware of the fact that you are unlikely to agree with all that I say. However, based on sudden comebacks, passionate debates, and rapid changes, I have tried making this list appropriate and enticing.
Pre-processors are hot; Full language stacks are not
It is not common for programmers nowadays to design a new programming language. The trend today is to simply write a pre-processor that is capable of translating the new code into an old one, featured with APIs and a rich set of libraries. Groovy is a popular example that was designed as a simple Java version minus the insistence of punctuation in this new language. A great fix for JavaScript is CoffeeScript.
JavaScript MV* Frameworks are hot; JavaScript files are not
It has become extremely easy to create new web pages and web applications. This is all down to the availability of such popular frameworks as Meteor JS, Backbone, Ember, AngularJS, jQuery Mobile, Sencha, and Kendo, which are capable of handling the content and events of the applications. JavaScript need not be written for creating a pop-up alert box as the HTML AJAX apps can take care of the same for you.
SVG+ JavaScript on Canvas is hot; Flash is not
It seems as if the use of Flash is nearing its end with web developers tending to switch preference to JavaScript. The latter has better integration with the DOM layer which has been designed to support new formats such as Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG). A number of APIs exist as well, offering elaborate drawings on the Canvas objects along with support from video cards.
CSS Frameworks are hot; Generic Cascading Style Sheets are not
Popular CSS Frameworks such as Compass and SASS provide encouragement to the programmers for writing legible, stable coding. Programmers are offered numerous constructs such as mix-ins, nesting blocks, and real variables, thus easing out the design layer. For example, tweaking a colour on your website may prove to be enough for altering its style, rather than including a new command to the existing CSS file.
GPU is hot; CPU is not
With video games being full of extensive graphical routines that are capable of running in parallel, video cards have also undergone significant changes so that they can do all the heavy work. Gamers tend to spend as much as $500-$600 for purchasing a GPU card. However, apart from the gamers, computer scientists are also looking to make the most of GPU cards for increasing the speed of applications by as much as a hundred times.
As far as software development and programming trends are concerned, the list is seemingly an endless one. However, we have chosen only a few from this list. If you would like to share your opinion on the subject feels free to make your thoughts known in the comments section below. For a custom software development of your business, hire professional Software Programmer Brisbane services from experienced web development solution providers.
