2019 Tech trends

It is 2019 and the current technology landscape continues to grow and change. New technologies are created and older ones become mature leading to higher adoption; at the same time others slowly fade away.  At Arroyo Labs we are always on the look out for promising technologies and opportunities to innovate.  Here are some of the technologies changing the landscape for our customers and morphing the way we develop great software for the cloud.

Ecommerce

In the realm of Ecommerce Magento and Shopify are still two of the most popular and powerful options for online retailers.  If you are looking to migrate an existing store or create a new one, these are the two platforms that you should start your research with.  Adobe now owns Magento.  We are excited to see where they take the platform.

Some newer options to watch are Oscar and Saleor, especially if your Ecommerce is not a traditional storefront.  In this case you need building blocks instead of a large platform.   If your store behaves more like an app you will want to look at the alternatives as well.  Remember, if you are not doing traditional Ecommerce online you may not benefit from a traditional Ecommerce platform.

DevOps

Kubernetes took over in 2018, expect more of the same in 2019. It’s not a tool for everyone, but if you are running enterprise DevOps there’s a high chance you are using it or its on your roadmap this year.

2019 is a good time to get your DevOps practice in good shape.  Most enterprises are well into their DevOps journey.  If you haven’t began yours you should seriously evaluate how you are keeping your infrastructure managed, code deployed and secured in 2019.

The tools to manage your containers and dynamic structure are becoming rather mature, including monitoring and log management.  We are excited about tools like Datadog, Sumologic and Scaylr.

Here is an insightful post that’s worth a read, https://hackernoon.com/what-devops-taught-us-in-2018-e5f6637a4921

Programming Languages

Python is up in popularity amongst developers.  We did more Python in 2018 than we had in years past and I expect that trend to continue.  PHP and JavaScript are still great work horses.  PHP continues to get faster with each release and the development community more sophisticated than what folks may remember from years past. Expect more great libraries and apps from all three languages.

Keep an eye out for Golang and Kotlin, both rising quickly in popularity and continue to offer good developer experience.  These are well designed languages with unique properties. If you are doing mobile app Kotlin is a hot language right now, and Golang for the cloud.

Platforms & Frameworks

There are many libraries and platforms that we are fond of.  Our clients, our developers and our peers have been particularly happy with some of the following.

JavaScript: React, Vue, & Angular

These are the trifecta of JavaScript frameworks, if we aren’t using these we are using vanilla Js.

Node was not mentioned because Node is now a part of most modern JavaScript development.  Even if you are not running your website with a node server, there is a good chance node was used to generate the JavaScript and/or css that is running on it.  It’s almost a given these days.

Python: Django, Flask, & TensorFlow

Django has been embraced by both start ups and enterprise apps as a full framework.  Flask is excellent for APIs and creating a custom microservice environment.

TensorFlow is one of the top AI/ML libraries around.  It is written in C++ with popular and well supported Python bindings.  Keep an eye out for PyTorch, another ML library, it has been gaining support and adoption.  Developers have been saying it has a smaller learning curve compared to TensorFlow.

Go:  Gin, Go kit, and Ponzu

Gin is the most popular framework, Go kit is great for microservices, and Ponzu is a minimal cms with excellent API support.  Many folks who work with go try to avoid frameworks and stick with strategic libraries instead.

PHP: Laravel & Symfony

I want to see Laravel take more queues from Symfony but arguably Laravel is more popular than Symfony.  In my personal opinion Symfony is the more sophisticated (and better) framework.  Perhaps ironically though, we find ourselves using Laravel as a framework more.  We do use more Symfony components than Laravel components however.  Even our homegrown open source Erdiko packages leverage Symfony components.

Magento, Drupal, and WordPress continue to be relevant and excellent choices for the right use cases.  Companies are experimenting more with using them as APIs (headless) instead of as all-in-one solutions.  This is a powerful way to leverage what they are good at while giving your primary platform the flexibility it needs to meet your business demands.  Yes large tech companies are embracing applications built on PHP, not just Facebook and Slack.

Machine Learning and AI

Expect machine learning and AI to continue to be more accessible and widespread in 2019.  AI is not just a buzz word it is solving real business problems for companies. No sentient machines are in store for 2019, but it is impressive how fast the industry is moving right now.

Serverless

Serverless continues to build momentum.  We’re expecting more innovations to come in serverless this year.  When and how to adopt Serverless needs to be strategic.  It is not magic and it will not solve all your scaling headaches.  It can, however, offer some important advantages for key pieces of your application.

WebAssembly

Expect more adoption in 2020 as the early adopters work out more of the kinks in 2019.  This is one technology that Arroyo Labs is especially excited about and hopes to help clients innovate with it in the future.  To learn more about Web Assembly check out our recent post or visit the official website.

Conclusions

There are so many interesting technologies to build software with these days.  Be thoughtful with your architecture and plan accordingly.  The old adage measure twice and cut once comes to mind.  Most importantly it is how your software solves a problem and helps your customers that is most important.  Great software is not limited to any one language or technology.  Anyone who says otherwise has blinders on.

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