Changes at Microsoft have brought on a shift in the world of technical development.
2014 saw Microsoft appoint a new CEO for only the third time in its history. Since Satya Nadella took over, there has been a fundamental shift in the Redmond Campus towards openness, and improving the lives of both developers and end users. Just last month, Microsoft announced that the .net framework, the underpinnings of Windows and many of its apps, would become open source, allowing anyone to contribute to the codebase and use its technologies on other platforms. There’s talk of more of Windows becoming freely available in the lead up to the launch of Windows 10 (scheduled for late 2015), and that can only be a good thing.
On the browser front, 2015 will finally see Internet Explorer try to emulate the model of Chrome & Firefox, supporting only the latest browser (pushed to end users via automatic updates) and releasing updates more frequently. This is a massive shift for Microsoft, which sent waves of relief through the development community.
Five of the seven major contributors on the popular open source web framework node.js announced recently they would be splitting off to create their own version, io.js, throwing the future of the framework in doubt. It will be interesting to see in 2015 the effects of this and whether it will improve, or hurt, the node community.
As already discussed in trend number seven, mobile device usage has exploded over the last few years, leading companies and brands to focus their attention on providing a more native experience for the end user through the use of custom apps. These have often grabbed their information from a website, purely because brands were creating apps as an after-thought, not really understanding their potential.
However, there is a move in the industry towards creating a central API (information store), which any front end (website, app, connected device) can access. This leads to a more consistent experience, less development issues and a faster turnaround with releases. Tools such as Prismic and Parse provide developers with a platform to rapidly create an API, enabling even single-man teams to easily create exciting and innovative Apps. We believe this will continue to increase in popularity throughout 2015.
By Fast Web Media.
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