Five Software Development Trends for 2024

 

In 2024, we can expect a retreat from cloud-native and outsourced development, as well as a decrease in the number of developer jobs and an increase in software security issues, writes independent analyst Christopher Tozzi on the ITPro Today portal.

What trends will shape changes in software development solutions in 2024? And what might these trends mean for the IT industry as a whole?

1. Growing opposition to microservices and Cloud-Native

For the better part of the last decade, most developers have been told that adopting cloud-native architectures and technologies like microservices is the key to innovation.

This isn't always bad advice. In many use cases, cloud-native apps and microservices actually provide better performance, increased reliability, and more efficient development cycles.

But I suspect that the cloud-native revolution has already peaked, and that more and more developers are realizing that not every application needs to be refactored to run as a microservice. There’s no shame in sticking with monoliths and running your applications directly on virtual machines, rather than containerizing them and orchestrating them with Kubernetes.

Don't expect cloud native architectures to disappear in 2024, but expect interest in the cloud native trend to at least wane a little.

2. More software security issues

The trend in software security has been dismal for years. Statistics on the frequency and cost of attacks have been steadily worsening, and threat actors have been spawning new attack methods — such as supply chain attacks and API attacks — on top of more traditional methods like ransomware.

I’d like to think that 2024 will be the year that things change—when developers and security analysts finally turn the tide against threats—but there’s no reason to believe that will be the case. On the contrary, I expect the software security landscape to become even more confusing in the new year.

It's not that companies don't understand the importance of software security, or that developers aren't putting enough effort into securing their applications. It's that software is becoming increasingly complex, and the more complex applications become, the harder it is to secure them.

3. The developer shortage is shrinking

Enterprises have long complained about their difficulty hiring and retaining skilled developers, and this trend looks set to continue.

However, given that 2023 is set to be the year of massive layoffs in the tech industry, I suspect that new developer hiring data will show that skilled developers are no longer as scarce as the jobs for them. For the first time in my lifetime, we may be entering a period where being a coder is no longer a ticket to a high-paying job.

This doesn't mean that software development services are becoming a bad field. But I don't think that in 2024 the developer job market will experience the same boom as in previous years.

4. Blockchain development skills become irrelevant

Back in January 2023, blockchain development skills were reported to be in high demand. However, since then, the blockchain ecosystem appears to have completely collapsed. In 2024, there will be less and less reason to believe that knowing how to build blockchain applications will help you find a job.

Will there be a niche need for blockchain developers? Absolutely. But I wouldn’t bet on blockchain being the hottest area to develop in. Try AI instead — though I’m skeptical that coders with specialized AI skills will be in high demand in the long term.

5. Refusal of outsourcing development

The idea of ​​replacing in-house development teams with third-party coders has long been attractive from a business perspective. Outsourced development is typically cheaper (largely because outsourced developers are often also offshore developers with relatively low salaries), and it is theoretically more flexible.

However, I think many companies that have experimented with outsourcing realize that it doesn't always save money (because they have to pay for the overhead of outsourced developers), it isn't always more flexible (because outsourced teams may not be as versatile in what they can do and what technologies they can work with as in-house developers), and it can bring new risks, such as lower-quality software security practices.

I don't have hard data to prove this, but I think there's good reason to believe that 2024 will be the year that outsourcing software development loses its advantage for many companies.

Conclusion

The only reliable prediction you can make about software development, or anything else, is that most of them will be more wrong than right. However, if I were a betting man — and if there was a way to bet on software development trends — I’d bet on changes like the shift away from cloud native, a decline in interest in outsourced development, and a decline in developer jobs as the key trends of 2024.