Companies can deliver critical technology projects more efficiently if they hire developers who are well versed at using AI to create faster, cleaner code, says Igor Ayello Borges, an experienced full-stack developer.
While some perceive AI as a threat to software developer jobs, Igor believes it will instead encourage companies to hire developers who can help them win what he calls the “race for productivity”.
Igor started his career in 2005 as a graphic designer before moving into developing games seven years later. He became a full-stack developer in 2016 and is currently working in one of the biggest food companies in Brazil, primarily using the .Net platform and ReactJS.
We chatted to Igor about the impact of AI, cloud technology and other major trends that have affected recruitment in the software development space.
What are some significant trends that have shaped software development hiring over the past 10 years?
Cloud computing:I remember 2011 when every tech blog and news outlet was discussing cloud computing, predicting that within a decade, every application would migrate to the cloud. 10 years later and they were right! Nowadays most of the applications are hosted in the cloud, like Azure or AWS, and a full-stack developer must at least know the basics of how to navigate in a cloud service.
Backend development:A lot of new backend languages became popular in the last 10 years like Go and Python. Of course, each language can be applied in certain situations like Python, which is great for data science and big data. Other ‘traditional’ languages like C# and Java are still useful in both new projects and legacy systems.
Databases: The traditional SQL databases are still popular and stable like Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle Database, and PostgreSQL. Most of them have a good integration with cloud services. The NoSQL databases are getting popular and they are used in specific applications like data mining, data science and machine learning.
Frontend development: When I started as a full-stack developer, the most popular frontend frameworks and plugins were jQuery and Razor, but one year later AngularJS (and then Angular 2), ReactJS and VueJS started to dominate. These tools work well with CSS frameworks like Bootstrap and TailWind.
How have these trends evolved more recently, and where do you see them heading in the future?
Most of these trends revolve around cloud computing. When I started my career, all the applications were running on conventional servers. Most of the tools I mentioned in the previous question were built to run on these servers. From 10 years ago to now, most of the databases, programming languages and frameworks were developed to run optimized on cloud, which meant the process of running a system in production became faster.
In the future, I believe artificial intelligence (AI) will work with the cloud to suggest system optimization and warn developers about possible bugs.
What impact do you think AI will have on full-stack development jobs?
The AI trend is key to optimizing development and deployment. AI can help developers avoid mistakes and bugs, and suggest better solutions to clean code.
It will benefit the software development market and help it operate faster. With more available time, developers can focus on solving problems and present new solutions and features to businesses and product owners.
The next biggest challenge to the full-stack developers of the future will be to focus on business problems and less on technical skills. There will also be a race for productivity: companies that can bring more features to clients in a shorter time period will be the winners in their industries.
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