Web Dev: 2017 Surprises and 2018 Predictions

Given how fast technology is changing, we thought it would be interesting to ask IT executives to share their thoughts on the biggest surprises in 2017 and their predictions for 2018.

Here's what they told us about Web Dev.

Rick Manelius, Chief Product Officer, DRUD Tech

2017 - The reaction regarding Facebook's choice of a license for React.js that started with a swirl of confusion and worry and ultimately led to WordPress threatening to remove it from its codebase. Given Facebook's size and the fact that it doesn't benefit financially due to the adoption of this framework, many people (myself included) thought the response would have been "take it or leave it." Yet to the surprise and delight of the open source community, several Facebook projects were moved to the MIT license.

2018 - I believe that many communities are going to continue to work through identities crises due to changes in their codebases, communities, and customers. Drupal's push for "ambitious experiences" may push smaller projects to WordPress while WordPress's Automattic may absorb the low to mid-end hosting market and undercut others in the ecosystem that built business models in those sectors. Additionally, we may see these issues come to a head and result in additional forks, such as the one that occurred within the Node.js community.

Justin Rodenbostel, Executive Director, SPR Consulting

2017 - One of the biggest surprises in web development is the wholesale abandonment of older SPA frameworks in favor of React and Angular 2/4. Even the demand for Angular 1.x has fallen off the cliff. Everyone from enterprises to startups is interested in creating more engaging, user-driven experiences that aren’t achievable with legacy frameworks. The focus on these two frameworks has also led to a broader modernization of front-end development staff.

Looking to 2018, the focus will continue to be on creating the same rich experiences. But these experiences will go beyond to include tailored, data-driven experiences supported by usage analytics and advanced technology like chatbots. Also of interest is the continued migration away from native mobile apps to richer, responsive web experiences on mobile devices in the Progressive Web Apps model announced by Google this year.

Thierry Schellenbach, Co-founder and CEO, Stream

As the developer tools market continues to grow, so will the adoption of Features-as-a-Service (FaaS) platforms and APIs. Use of FaaS offerings will become the new normal for developers and product owners looking to build commonly needed features within their applications. The biggest brands in the world will realize the benefits of building on top of reliable APIs over creating specific functionality from scratch. The largest benefit being the ability for companies to trade hours of development time spent on building basic functionality, for the ability to stay focused on the core mission of their products.

Sandeep Adwankar, Sr. Product Manager, Sencha

2017 - QA and dev teams are moving away from the mammoth application lifecycle management solutions in droves in favor of more nimble, easy-to-install and use point solutions that integrate with adjacent tools in the testing ecosystem.

In 2018, we will start to see progressive web app (PWA) technologies gain mainstream adoption with updates in mobile browsers. Web developers will quickly adopt PWA technologies such as service workers, notifications, and background sync, and create modern PWA web apps that are as fast and reliable as native apps.

Thomas Di Giacomo, CTO, SUSE

2018 will be the year organizations will need to be more open than ever before. A true “open” open-source approach is needed to integrate technologies such as analytics and big data together with artificial intelligence (AI). An “open” architecture is more relevant to integrate technologies. Placing technologies together, in a non-open-source world, is very complicated and very customized because you are trying to mix one thing with another thing. Open-source technologies are broader from the start. And another thing, most of the new emerging technologies are already open-source, like AI or machine learning frameworks, all those things have become open-source first. So, it’s a lot easier to combine those things together when everything is open-source. When we relate this to an “Open” open approach in a non-technical perspective, you want to combine different pieces of the stack together, you have to be open to your competitors, and you have to be open to things with other companies as well. A true Open Open-Source approach means you have to be willing to work with everyone.