2022 Trends Developers Should Look Out For

It's finally a new year, which means we can get around to the tech that we missed out on last year. 2021 was just an amazing year for tech in general. Rust saw a gigantic boost in popularity according to the Stack Overflow Developer Survey. TypeScript also continued to get recognition as the most dominant JavaScript. DevOps also became much more trendy with more people having to do more DevOps related tasks now that the cloud is growing and growing in popularity. And don't even get me If 2021 was anything, it was the year of crypto. NFTs, DOAs, tokens, decentralized blockchains, BLTs. Web3 is showing some really exciting promise for developers and consumers. Despite the saturation of coins, tokens, and right-click saves, Web3 is on track to really becoming a superpower thanks to Ethereum and Solana. But it's 2022. Enough with the old, and in with the new. Here are some programming trends for 2022. Now, AR and VR are not new technologies. Far from it. The Oculus Rift was introduced in 2012 and eventually was released to consumers in 2016. What we're seeing now is a much larger demographic of people starting to get into VR. With the Oculus Quest 2 being a somewhat reasonable price standalone piece of hardware, and consumers constantly changing at-home work environment, we are seeing developers push to find solutions using immersive VR experiences. And the same is happening with AR. Apple releasing ARKit with iOS 11 in 2017 and Google with ARCore with Android 7.0 in 2018. AR has already done incredible things with our smartphones or proprietary devices like the HoloLens. Right now, AR has a lot of potential through wearables. Just not at $3,500. It's also rumored that Apple will release a headset by the end of this year, so that will definitely open the floodgates to developers. The pandemic has spiked our usage of digital devices and AR slash VR will soon be the new vehicle that will fuel developer innovation. I literally just made that up. Throw that on a quote image. Cybersecurity is massive. Remember when I said the pandemic spiked our device usage like 10 seconds ago? Well, I think we're also realizing how broken everything truly is. Log4j shook the entire internet and made everyone scared that they were a target. Spoiler alert, they most likely were. Cybersecurity is a gigantic industry already, but I think it's just going to be bigger and bigger from here. I think a reason the trend will continue to go up this year is because people are now realizing that security isn't just a setting you flick on. You have to analyze your application to see if there's any scary code. You then have to check to see if there's any vulnerabilities in your dependencies. What about your server dependencies? Is your SSL certificate renewed? How about two-factor authentication? Can we have all this done in the next two hours? You have a lot of these cloud providers trying to do the heavy work for you, but let's be honest, it's a full-time job. Cybersecurity is just something everyone is starting to take much more seriously, especially in 2022. Artificial intelligence is still making headlines to this day, most likely because the amount of tools available to start creating machine learning models easily, such as Hugging Face, Lobe, and other AI tools provided by the big cloud companies. The last year, programmers have started to get scared for their jobs as tools like GitHub Copilot and OpenAI's Codex show that it can generate code intelligently. But hold up, hold up. AI is here to help programmers, not destroy them. I don't think AI will replace programmers at all. Like, do I really want to write out our basic function for the millionth time? However, I think as time goes on, we'll see artificial intelligence be used in applications more regularly. Similar to how Google implements its AI email composer, you don't see them bragging about it like it's their entire product. AI is becoming more accessible to developers without needing to know how it works. OpenAI API is a good example. Whether you're a hexagon NFT Twitter lover, or a YouTube commenter writing their 10-page thesis on why it's destroying the earth, there's no denying that Web3 is here to stay. My personal opinion is that the underlying technology behind Web3 is impressive, but I think it still has a long way to go. Hear me out. Ethereum is one of the leaders when it comes to smart contract development with a solidity programming language, but it isn't really popular amongst programmers. Solana uses Rust, but it's not on the Ethereum blockchain, meaning you can't develop on the Ethereum network, meaning I can't buy a CryptoPunk or an Ape. The important things? I mean, maybe Solana is worth it. Transaction costs are extremely low, for now, and value of Sol is growing rapidly, for now. Oh, and can we talk about the metaverse for a second? You basically can take almost all my previous things I said on this list and apply it to this concept that all these big tech companies are now doubling down for. So you have lots of opportunities to develop for this vague concept known as a metaverse, or something. You must think that I hate crypto and the metaverse. Well, no. I think Web3 is a really cool concept, I'm just a bit skeptical of it being the solution to absolutely everything that people claim it to be. The floodgates to Web3 is wide open, and there's a variety of solutions that Web3 can solve. Be aware of scams, and be an ethical dev that builds products with real value to consumers. So many people are saying that Web3 is crazy, but so are these guys, clearly. What development trend are you interested in? Was it one that I mentioned in this video, or something different? Thank you for watching my first long-form YouTube video. I've been making short-form content just to test the waters out, and it's been incredible. I've reached over 10,000 subscribers, and I just can't thank each and every single one of you enough. It's just a dream come true. I know it's a small number to some people, but to me, that's just a huge, huge number. Make sure you guys like and subscribe, and let me know what you think of these long-form videos. What else do you want to hear from me?