The Next Decade of Software Development - Richard Campbell - NDC London 2023

How will software development evolve in the 2020s? Join Richard Campbell as he explores the landscape of technology that will have a massive impact on software development over the next ten years.

What new devices are coming? Will Artificial Intelligence take over everything? How will people connect to the web in the next ten years? And what about Quantum Computing? All these topics and more will shape our future!

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🎯 Key Takeaways for quick navigation:

00:00 🎤 Richard Campbell, an experienced software developer, discusses the future of software development, including trends and challenges in the next decade.
02:07 🧠 Moore's Law, the trend of doubling the number of transistors on a chip every 18-24 months, is reaching its limits, and future improvements in computing power will be constrained.
05:39 💻 Architectural improvements and optimizing processors become crucial as Moore's Law ends, and companies like Apple's M1 and M2 chips showcase advancements in architecture.
09:59 📉 Network limitations, especially with 5G and 6G, will be a significant constraint in the future, impacting data transfer and communication between devices.
17:37 🌐 Ubiquitous computing, where every device has an IP address and connects to the network, will become more prevalent, driven by innovations like satellite networks and increased connectivity.
19:43 🦠 The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated cloud migration and changed work dynamics, but economic impacts, loss of expertise, and supply chain disruptions have also posed challenges.
21:47 💡 Software developers may face economic challenges and a shift from a growth mindset to a focus on return on investment as the industry evolves.
22:31 🏭 Companies should focus on building tools that help them make money and work more efficiently.
23:00 📈 Companies are becoming more reflective and reevaluating their priorities due to economic changes and technological advancements.
24:09 🌐 The browser market is relatively stable, with Chrome, Safari, Edge, and Firefox being major players, and web development is still mostly focused on browsers.
25:17 🧩 Blazer and WebAssembly offer opportunities for running client-side code in various environments, with potential for server-side use as well.
29:11 🕸️ The concept of decentralized web is gaining popularity, offering more control and flexibility while avoiding some centralization drawbacks.
32:07 🚀 Web 3.0, with concepts like blockchain, has potential but has been widely misapplied and faces issues with crypto and centralization.
33:33 🆕 .NET has made significant advancements, transitioning to a cloud-centric, heterogeneous client platform while maintaining compatibility and familiar skills.
35:05 🔮 MAUI (Multi-platform App UI) by Microsoft aims to provide a unified client development model for multiple platforms, although it's still evolving.
36:45 🛠️ The Power Platform empowers domain experts to build apps and solves UI multi-platform issues, leading to increased productivity and ease of use.
39:03 🛡️ Containerization of software is growing, with potential applications in desktop machines to enhance security against exploits and attacks.
42:28 🧭 Building a successful career in development involves choosing between staying on the Leading Edge or becoming an expert in a specific technology stack.
43:23 🤖 Artificial Intelligence (AI) is an umbrella term often used for technologies that don't work yet; when they do, they receive new names like deep learning or predictive analytics.
44:19 🖥️ The current era of software development incorporates various AI technologies like image recognition, speech bots, and form recognizers that are readily available as libraries, making it easier to use AI in software development.
45:30 🤖 Machine learning models, like form recognizers, can be used to automatically recognize forms and associated data, streamlining the process of digitizing forms without manual coding.
46:23 📈 Analyzing data using advanced analytics and machine learning is a valuable career opportunity, as the volume of data continues to increase, and the cloud provides better tools for advanced data analysis.
47:47 ⚙️ Beyond predictive analytics, the integration of prescriptive analytics, which combines predictive models with actions, enables automated decision-making, as seen in personalized marketing strategies and emergency planning.
49:25 🎮 Machine learning models, like OpenAI's Co-Pilot, are becoming valuable tools for programming, assisting developers in generating code snippets, but human evaluation and discernment remain essential.
52:01 🕶️ Although AR headsets are a promising technology, their commercial adoption faces challenges, and 2023 might not be a significant year for AR headset advancements.
58:07 ⚛️ Quantum computing's potential lies in solving complex problems in fields like agriculture, chemistry, and material science, but the technology is still in its early stages and requires significant development.
01:05:49 🛠️ Quantum computing is still at a stage reminiscent of early mechanical mainframes, with various approaches to building quantum computers and the need for a stable and reliable qubit technology.

[whatrobot]

Interesting topic and well presented, I certainly learned a few new things. Thanks!

[SteveGraegert]

Good talk, but I wish Richard would have spent more time (or even some at all) on software development of the future as the title suggests.

[filipmilovanovic]

"John Carmack, the guy behind Oculus" 🤔 ... Doom be upon us

[displaynamet]

I feel like the code could have been called "The Next Decade Of Microsoft Software Development"

[HypronoDad]

Wish I had the level of confidence and body language. Great presentation.

[FunMushizzle]

Great talk. Nothing to do with software development.

[missinghandle]

No one could have predicted that the "choose Unity" part of this talk would be what aged poorly just 5 months later 😆

[LoganBourgeois-mr]

appreciate the learnings from the talk

[roderickmorrison]

People don't use Chrome because they prefer the browser. They like the integration with the Google mother ship.

[shoxruxumarov]

thanks uncle Richard, it was really helpful to broaden the way I used to think

[karlwibi]

Another thing that might help also is to try to document the component if there is no existing documentation. That will help you also increase your knowledge of the feature.

[joseantoniojose]

Well first when we thinks on software development it is better to first take a look decades ago when the first software were designed and we also take another look to how the software design have been changing in the last 4 decades and is an big change which wil continue without ending never. Mr. Richard Campbel was a so helpfull and interesting video. Thanks so much

[rauru]

We're going to exhaust Moore's "Law" because we're going to run out of atoms, and then architecture performance should return to be a more relevant discussion.

A form of containerization, such as Wasm is doing, should give us the next abstraction layer for web development.

“Blockchain is not inherently stupid, it’s just wildly misapplied”, maybe we’ll use the remaining of it to do something useful one day.

The big collection of concepts we call AI is being used to create handy tools we should keep an eye on, especially to develop solutions to approach the end user to his domain-oriented problems.

Hololens (and similar headgear devices) sounds like a relevant goal, but it seems we’re still a bit far from it doing what we really want it to do.

Quantum computing should give us power to solve problems we couldn’t solve yet, like pinpointing specific chemistry reactions.

The best way to predict the future is to make it :)

[sanokhan]

As a student of Software Engineering my question is that: Should i learn coding to make Games and Apps or switch to no code tools?

[danieldepaolo]

Such a good talk. I want him to make a new one every three months due to the release of these generative models like Gemini 1.5!

[blueberrypowered]

Wonderful talk. Thank you for sharing this with all of us!

[neeftgamer]

Funny to mention Visual Studio 2010. With the current version of Visual Studio 2022 (version 17.7.0) even the Start Page is back in favor of the startup screen 🤣. No confusion there.

[EmileDeWilde]

Yes, many think that if we pack in processing power and memory we can then have bulky applications with generated code. So do the same thing as some custome classes in JS, we move a whole library to do the same and we further decrease network efecctivity.

[qabacus]

He pretty much covered all technologies we are developing or using but he forget IoT/IIoT and light computing which is a domain of computing between silicon and quantum computing. Nice talk ! Computing industry marching on...