1. Remote-friendly workplaces are on the rise
The pandemic forced professionals of all areas to work from home. Whether you hate that or love that, it’s caused an increase in the number of workplaces becoming remote-friendly. And that’s something to get excited about.
Aside from the work-life balance the option of remote work can bring, this flexibility also gives developers more freedom to find their dream job, since it doesn’t have to be in the city you live. On top of that, more remote work options is likely to bring more diversity into the workforce, which comes with obvious, and not so obvious, benefits.
2. Microsoft started forcing people off Internet Explorer
You may have missed a small-but-significant announcement that Microsoft started forcing people off Internet Explorer. If someone using Internet Explorer tries to load Youtube or Twitter, for example, they will now be prompted to install the more modern, chromium-based Edge browser, if they wish to continue.
Unfortunately, Microsoft maintains the list of websites that will trigger this prompt, but regardless, this move will hopefully continue to put the final nails in the coffin for this awful, outdated browser that some of us poor front-end devs are still stuck with supporting.
3. Amazon released Honeycode
This year, Amazon announced Honeycode, a no-code mobile and web app builder. This release highlights a growing trend in the no-code or low-code application development space and promotes, according to ThoughtWorks, the democratisation of programming.
Tools like this can help developers by simplifying app development or completely outsourcing it to other departments. This will ultimately free up developers’ time to focus on more sophisticated problems, such as dealing with the increasing demand of data engineering for teams
4. Apple revealed the first Apple Silicon-based Macs
Late in the year Apple finally announced the first line up of Macintosh computers using Apple Silicon. Since these devices are fitted with ARM-based chips, similar to those found in iPhones and iPads, developers will soon be able to create apps that will work across the whole Apple ecosystem, out of the box.
And even if you’re not a developer for the Apple world, the performance and efficiency improvements in these devices will surely be warmly welcomed by the nearly 1 in 3 professional developers who use Mac products.
5. Deno runtime now ready for production
In case you haven’t been following, the creator of NodeJS has developed a replacement named Deno. This is a new server-side runtime that aims to right the wrongs of its predecessor, by improving security, bundling and typescript support. And around the middle of this year, Deno announced it is ready for production use in its version 1.0 release, marking a major milestone for the future of dynamically-scripted, backend development.
6. GitHub made a bunch of announcements
It was a year of big announcements from GitHub that will help devs going ahead. Firstly Github announced that it bought NPM, promising to invest in the package management platform. Then they made Github free for teams. And finally, they introduced GitHub Codespaces, as a way for devs to code directly in the browser.
7. 5G is getting rolled out
This year “5G just got real”, according to Chris Rock (as per usual, only when Apple does this do people think it’s a thing). This technology promises fast, low-latency internet speeds across the world. Which will open up new opportunities for the Internet of Things, AR/VR, artificial intelligence and blockchain technology, says Forbes.
