4 Key Trends Shaping the Future of Front-End Development

Front-end development has changed so much over the years, the reason being goes beyond technological advancements and is mainly due to the ever-growing demands of users. As a software development company, there’s only one thing you can do when you’re faced with change; embrace it. 

As a software service provider, if you’re not getting better, you’re going backward. Paying attention to what’s going on and continuously evolving your development practices is crucial in today's dynamic landscape. Since front-end development is so high in demand today, programmers have made it a key point of focus to stay ahead of the curve. 

In this article, we’ll be going over 4 key trends that we’re seeing in front-end development with various tools and frameworks that are shaping the future of web development:

An Emphasis on UX

As businesses continue to shift their operations online, the demand for user-friendly websites and applications rises. This trend has led to the development of new tools and frameworks that enhance the process of creating a great user experience such as:

1. Loop11

2. Framer X

3. Adobe XD

4. Gaby.js

5. Vue.js

6. Hotjar

There are many more but these are just a few of the trending options at the moment.

In addition to this, the emphasis is big on accessibility and inclusivity; businesses must ensure that everyone can easily access and use their digital platforms on any device from just about anywhere.

Today there are AI-driven tools meant to enhance the results of development tools and frameworks by using algorithms to predict user behaviour and identify patterns in user data. By analyzing these interactions among users, software developers can consistently make optimizations. 

A hot choice of tool for this right now is Microsoft IntelliTest which enhances the testing phase during development for .NET code. What IntelliTest will do is generate a suite of tests for .NET code, which then allows developers to identify those pesky bugs early and ultimately mitigate high test maintenance costs. With its AI-driven capabilities, IntelliTest can automatically evolve the test suite alongside the evolving code, ensuring overall comprehensive coverage in real-time.

Reactive Programming

This is one everyone’s got their eye on in 2023, mainly because of how scalable and responsive applications materialize with reactive programming. You might have thought of traditional programming like waiting in a never-ending line at the grocery store. Everything has to happen in order, step by step, and if something takes too long, everything gets held up. The draw to reactive programming then, is because it allows front-end developers to handle multiple tasks at once, it’s essentially like juggling. Things can happen independently and simultaneously without blocking each other which allows for a more dynamic user experience.

The kind of applications that benefit most from reactive programming are the ones that need to handle a high volume of concurrent tasks. Imagine you’re running a social media platform, and millions of users are actively posting 24/7. In traditional programming, the influx of user-generated content would be overwhelming. It'd be like trying to read every single book in a library one by one. The benefit of reactive programming is that it lets you handle user interactions simultaneously. 

You get the picture, reactive programming can process information in ways traditional programming simply can't match. Reactive X is a great tool for this since it’s flexible and can handle frontend, cross-platform, and backend development. When it comes to frontend development with Reactive X, you can use libraries like RxJS (for JavaScript), RxSwift (for Swift), or Rx.NET (for .NET) to create event-driven applications on the front end.

Performance Tuning

Whether it’s an application or a website, users want speed and responsiveness more than a fancy look. Optimizing performance is a multifaceted topic that must be prioritized to create a well-rounded UI/UX. Here are 3 techniques to make this happen:

1. Caching

Implement caching to store data you access frequently and you’ll avoid redundant calculations. For instance, if you have an API that retrieves data from a remote server, cache the response to avoid making the same request multiple times.

2. Asynchronous Processing 

Utilizing this will improve responsiveness by handling multiple tasks concurrently (as we’ve already mentioned with reactive programming). This prevents blocking in the main thread and keeps the UI responsive. 

3. Optimize code

Always look for areas in your code that can be optimized. For instance, if you have a loop that iterates over a large collection, think about a data structure that’s more efficient like hash maps opposed to an array. In addition to this, try to minimize unnecessary function calls.

Going Serverless

Serverless architecture is great for developers, though business owners and end-users get their share of benefits as well. For developers, going serverless means less energy is being spent on managing the infrastructure, allowing them to focus on coding and the innovation side of things. 

The cloud provider ends up taking care of the management aspect which is great for scalability and maintenance, but monitoring is still a necessity. 5 tools that are great for serverless monitoring include:

1. SolarWinds

2. Amazon CloudWatch

3. New Relic

4. Lumigo

5. Pingdom

Serverless computing is most notable for its ability to scale according to the user demands of the platform. Tools like the ones listed above give users real-time insights into metrics, logs, and events, which proactively identifies issues and ensures a smooth operation of serverless applications all-around.

The Takeaway

With everything considered, it’s clear that today’s landscape demands we emphasize constantly finding new ways to optimize front-end development. Remember, what’s relevant today may soon not be, which is why complacency so often eliminates businesses that don’t look for or accept change. 

With software development, complacency can’t be a factor for even one day while running your business. We need to embrace new frameworks, tools, and methodologies that enhance productivity and efficiency while prioritizing agility and adaptability to provide the best product possible. 

Written By Ben Brown

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ISU Corp is an award-winning software development company, with over 17 years of experience in multiple industries, providing cost-effective custom software development, technology management, and IT outsourcing.

Our unique owners’ mindset reduces development costs and fast-tracks timelines. We help craft the specifications of your project based on your company's needs, to produce the best ROI. Find out why startups, all the way to Fortune 500 companies like General Electric, Heinz, and many others have trusted us with their projects. Contact us here.

Implementing Serverless Computing In Your Business: What You’ll Want to Know

Software and technology are consistently moving towards efficiency and slickness. Efficiency in the sense that the user doesn’t know how complex the system within the hardware is. Slickness in the sense that the technology functions fast while meeting a standard of performance. For example, look at the development of cell phones. It used to be a box with an antenna that you could only make calls from. Now they are as thin as 7mm and perform so many functions that you hardly find yourself going to dial a number. 

Of course, consumers want to have these kinds of advanced systems but the technicians behind the scenes need the resources to do so. The introduction of cloud computing has been a breakthrough and changed the way networks function within platforms. This is due to many factors, but primarily the speed of network deployment, scalability, security of data, and reduction in operating costs have been key contributors.

A dominant approach that is heavily innovative to software and, more specifically, useful for software developers is serverless architecture. Now the first thing to point out is that the name “serverless” is misleading since there are in fact servers running this process. However, it has earned its name because the server aspect is operated by machines, removing them from the responsibilities of the developer. 

This cloud-native development tactic requires only that the developer run coding for the program. This is possible because the system only runs when in use and as a result is hardly idle. This is beneficial for organizations using this infrastructure as they will only pay for the bandwidth they use as opposed to paying a fixed monthly fee. This is night and day when compared to traditional server-based networks (or “client-server” networks) which are far more difficult and costly to manage. 

Cloud computing services run serverless architectures to handle the level of data being processed by the platforms they’re serving. This allows developers to oversee the application in a decomposed state and focus on building and running services. An example of a company that uses a serverless architecture is Netflix. Netflix uses Amazon Web Services Lambda (AWS) to keep up with the amount of stored and processed data as well as scaling servers to the requirements of a network with a high volume of users. Now, this is not suggesting that serverless computing is only necessary for platforms with a huge budget and millions of users. Any business can use this whether it's IT, health care, retail, banking, manufacturing, and more.

In our increasingly digital society, a vast number of industries are moving towards scalability to be able to effectively operate while delivering a high quality of service to clientele. Let’s break down this information into digestible segments so you can understand whether serverless computing is going to benefit your business or not:

FaaS

This is the ground floor in the skyscraper of the serverless computing architecture. With the integration of cloud computing came services that not only managed applications but operated and innovated them. This is where FaaS (Functions as a Service) is important as it is what allows developers to maintain and build on the application without having to worry about the servers in the back-end. Additionally, this allows developers to update code when responding to a user's request within the application. AWS Lambda is an example of FaaS; when Netflix users navigate through the platform by selecting and searching, the FaaS system is ready to respond. 

Scalability

It always comes back to this with cloud computing because there is no other way for a business to tailor its resources to the demands of its platform. If there is high traffic, more servers can be up and running to accommodate the requests and prevent a crash. Additionally, the resources can minimize themselves in times where there’s a low volume of requests which prevents wasted money.

Event-Based System 

Going back to the statement that applications are decomposed when they go serverless, this is used so components of the application operate autonomously. The benefit of this is that if there is an issue, it only affects a minute part of the log. As opposed to stream-based where each service is interconnected. 

Being UX-Oriented

The end-users of an application will have high standards for the experience aspect of your service as this is what allows you to retain clientele. Since architecture is now a low priority for developers, it allows them to focus on UX (user experience). This aspect is central not only to maintaining the application but to building a business that will expand in all directions. Now, it must not be forgotten that the user interface (UI) is central to UX.

Limitations

So now we’ve looked at all the upsides to serverless architecture, but there are two sides to every coin. If this is something worth considering implementing in your business, you must know the limitations of the service:

Reboots

In some cases, functions can become cold when faced with idleness requiring a “cold start”. This is when you’ll need to manually go into the system and invoke the functions to get them used to operate again. Cold starts can be mitigated by giving the system some level of activity, typically this involves going in once in a while to process requests.

Relying on a Third Party

The providers of your serverless architecture become the backbone of your application's operation. This limits your control and you may be subject to changes that come unexpectedly. This will of course be subjective based on the terms and conditions of the agreement you enter with your provider.

Best For Platforms With Fluctuating Volume

If your platform has a consistent workload, then serverless may not be the best option as scalability is not entirely necessary. For example, a web app whose visitor volume doesn’t go up or down significantly would not need to adjust its servers to relatively constant traffic.

Final Thoughts

Serverless computing will benefit developers and consumers just as much as business owners. This could save resources and allocate time to priorities, getting you ahead of the game by miles. Your users will love the flexibility just as much as you. However, implementation will not happen overnight and should instead be gradual to ease everyone under your IT umbrella.

Written By Ben Brown

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