I’m not a developer. I’ve never been a developer. But I’ve worked with a lot of them since I began my product management career. Software developers are my favorite people to work with as I share their basic ethos. I abhore sloppy work. I whole-heartedly embrace the craftsmanship approach. As do most software developers.

Recently I got to thinking about how software engineering as a whole will change in the next five years. So I did what comes naturally to me when I want to think through something…..I wrote it up. It’s pretty short. Let me know what you think I got right or wrong - @ngphadke. I guess we will know either way in 2023 anyways!

With the recent introduction of legal frameworks like GDPR in the EU and proposed Data Privacy regulation in the US, data privacy can no longer be an afterthought in the development process. Data privacy and compliance concerns will have to be baked into the design itself.

In five years, machine learning will go from being something only a special breed of programmers can do to being a standard part of every programmer’s skill set. Increasingly, machine learning driven algorithms will become a standard feature of any software product.

In the next five years, we will see the Internet of Things really coming to fruition. Increasingly, the impact of software development is felt tangibly in the physical world. The availability and security requirements of code that collects health data or that controls our cars is going to require a wholesale change to the way engineers design and code such software. There will be an increase in the adoption of paradigms like model-based design or TLA+.

There will be serious attempts made to develop an software powerful enough to convert requirements into working code. This will have a huge impact on how software engineers think about their profession.