Specialists need to follow the updates to know in what directions they can develop, what employers need, and in general to be aware of what is happening in the industry. Danis Tazetdinov, Chief Software Engineer, tells us about the IT industry trends.
What IT industry trends do you need to know about in 2020?
Currently, devices, applications, and services play a big part in our daily life. This leads to the fact that more and more personal data is managed by these applications and services. The most important trend now is to protect this data. According to the experience, even large companies have serious problems to ensure adequate security of user data. Considering that smartphones and tablets almost completely replaced desktop computers, we need to pay more attention to the protection and security of mobile applications.
The tendency to use end-to-end encryption (E2EE) (when even a development company cannot decrypt user data) is now noticeable not only in instant messengers. It is now used in cloud file storage, backup systems, etc.
It is good that quantum computing has not yet reached the level at which modern encryption algorithms will become useless. But this is only a matter of time (and it is around the corner). So, the task to develop (more importantly, prove) reliable encryption algorithms becomes of current interest again.
Protecting and improving the reliability of applications has always been a trend. Now, new ways of user interface development, such as SwiftUI and Jetpack Compose, will be relevant, since these solutions can reduce the number of errors and, therefore, make applications more reliable. In 2020, these technologies will be used more actively.
If we step aside from fundamental issues, you can, for example, pay attention to the fact that the initial wow-effect caused by applications like Pokémon Go is gradually disappearing, and “augmented reality” is becoming ordinary. Choosing furniture, trying on clothes, museum guides, and airport navigation already exist. We only need to wait for more appropriate devices for these applications to become our everyday life. The experience of Google Glass and Magic Leap One has shown that it is not easy to implement. But we are certainly moving in this direction. All major vendors are working on solutions in this field. It is possible that in 2020 we will see more attempts to enter the consumer device market.
So, for application developers, it makes sense to look towards the binding of business applications and games. It would be useful to freshen up your knowledge of trigonometry, as well as learn frameworks that will make developers’ life much easier (in iOS, these are ARKit and SceneKit).
Users and device manufacturers more and more often share their idea that you do not need to use devices all day. Mobile operating systems encourage users to spend less screen time. For developers, this means that their applications should perform their functions well enough and require as little user attention as possible.
To summarize, the year will be interesting for users even if high-quality AR glasses will not be released, cameras in new smartphones will certainly become better, processors become faster, and 5G networks will be more widely used. Developers, on the other hand, should be more attentive to users, protect their data, and not demand too much attention.
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