This is the last article from the rubrics “Software development in 2021 and beyond”. 

During this week we spoke about developers tools, remote-working, minting new developers, and why we need more developer talent.

Today’s topic will be related to open source and low-code solutions

Over the past year, we saw an interesting trend on GitHub that enterprise developer activity dropped on weekends in contrast to the open source contributions that jumped.

Open source can become an outlet for creative expression, an environment and community that supports learning new skills. We saw that open-source project creation jump 25% since April, year-over-year.

With the rising demands of new technologies, professional developers have switched to open source so that they can focus on their business requirements.

Research shows that 99% of applications contain open-source elements. The average project on GitHub has more than 200 package dependencies where the top 50 projects depend upon by more than 3 million packages. A lot of companies have now moved to the Cloud because they prefer platforms that offer ready access to open-source ecosystems.

And what about the low-code solutions?

As a consequence of the pandemic situation developers were asked to fundamentally reinvent how businesses operate. Microsoft saw how many developers adopt and support low-code tools. Low-code has the potential to fundamentally change how developers work.

Developer framework teams can create reusable components which can be leveraged by others. These building blocks help junior developers add value more quickly.  They can also help other developers, who lack formal development skills, create applications, and automation. These solutions built by hybrid teams can still use the same quality processes and DevOps automation.

Microsoft customers turn to the Power Platform in order to help business processes optimization and to improve communication and collaboration. The expectations are that low-code solutions will continue growing as a key tool for professional developers.

The low-code expert  Dona Sarkar shares a few key trends to keep an eye on such as the merging of low-code with collaboration platforms, the way automation helps resolve business hiccups, and how developer teams will collaborate  to solve business problems.

There’s no doubt the last year will have a lasting impact on the IT industry and the developer profession, however, there’s a lot to look forward to. It is exciting to see how we all continue to build, grow, and learn together as we continue to support the resilience of our broader communities!