Software engineering blips from 2031
Blowing away the blogwebs
I published my last blog post in 2017, approximately 4 years ago! I’m going to mark my comeback with something a little different, a little fun and spicy — 5 software engineering blips from 2031.
Back from the past
In Jan 2017 we, at IBM iX, were in the process of kicking off our first software engineer meet-up. I was given the ‘keynote’ slot to share some software engineering themes for the year for our community to start exploring.
I cobbled together and shared some ideas. Looking back through my sketchy notes, I had CICD pipelines for infrastructure as code, production-ready starter kits, containers and Kubernetes, micro-frontends, React, React Native, and reusable UI componentry SDKs. I was broadly on to something with these becoming every engineers diet throughout 2017 and beyond, yet largely informed by personal experimentation!
For this post, I’ll turn the uncertainty dial round to 100% as we travel to, and back from, 2031. Remember, all a bit of fun ;)
Back to the future
Here are my findings, with a particular lean towards software engineering & user experience.
#1 Engineers only innovate
What is it? Simply, software engineers as we know them today only innovate — creating new software engineering building blocks for users, other engineers, and AI to consume, like quantum functions. AI assists our engineers in both creation and continuous optimisation of these building blocks
How did we get there? As emerging low code platforms became mainstream, and ethical AI software engineering matured, software engineers pivoted to crafting exceptional developer experiences for both ‘citizen engineers’ and a new type of consumer — AI
#2 Adaptive experience
What is it? Users start to directly or indirectly influence their own digital experiences. User interfaces literally adapt to the consuming user in real time to meet their specific wants and needs
How did we get there? As engineers began to pair program with real users and ethical AI matured, control continuously shifted from the engineer to the user to the point where the engineer became superfluous for this activity and transitioned to invention
#3 VR as a first-class experience
What is it? Virtual reality becomes a first-class experience for both users and software engineers — challenging web and mobile for the top spot. Software engineers utilise VRDX, where they can scroll through VR developer experiences, using ethical gesture, eye, voice and neural interfaces
How did we get there? VR experience shifts from fun and games like Beat Saber to business differentiator at a rapid pace. A new channel is born and investment swarms to make the experience exceptional, replacing traditional devices like laptops with minimal, energy-efficient and cost-optimised sensors
#4 Self-optimising apps & cloud infrastructure
What is it? Apps and cloud infrastructure continuously self-optimise without human intervention. Based on usage and change patterns, Apps begin to refactor themselves. Humans however govern change via fitness functions — efficiency for climate care as a fitness function is highly incentivised
How did we get there? AI for software engineering matured to the point where it was possible for engineers to introduce new building blocks by merely defining TDD and BDD tests — AI did the rest. AI then started to take this concept into production, and self optimise based on real traffic
#5 Well-being & responsible computing
What is it? Organisations swarm around the well-being of software engineers — across Physical, Mental, Emotional & Spiritual. In turn, the rate of responsible computing innovation accelerates and becomes a trend — with elements like tech ethics, climate care & accessibility built into CICD pipelines
How did we get there? The open source community movement expands to cover non technical but vital topics like software engineer well-being. Organisations adopt and invest heavily to attract and retain the talent that will shape the future of the software world (well, solar system)
Why the analogy?
I love using analogies — Back to the Future hit the spot because of the obvious time travel and engineering elements, but also how an unproven and wacky idea that is shared ‘ahead of its time’ actually influences the direction we take and becomes a thing. This happens both inside the movie and outside the movie.
