{"id":59007,"date":"2022-04-01T15:25:02","date_gmt":"2022-04-01T14:25:02","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2022-07-13T14:38:35","modified_gmt":"2022-07-13T13:38:35","slug":"why-developers-need-to-look-beyond-code","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-gb\/industry\/blog\/technetuk\/2022\/04\/01\/why-developers-need-to-look-beyond-code\/","title":{"rendered":"Why developers need to look beyond code"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"An<\/p>\n

You already know that programming involves you in continuous learning. It’s easy to think of the objects of that learning as technologies: functional programming languages, key vaults, source scanners, and so on. Those are indeed important and valuable.<\/p>\n

Our technologies aren’t the only things changing, though. We always apply them within a larger cultural context, and we’re under-trained to deal with those<\/em> changes.<\/p>\n

Things we know that aren’t so<\/h3>\n

As a warm-up, recall Kevin Deldycke’s list of “Awesome Falsehoods<\/a>” for programmers, including: “My system will never have to deal with names from China”, “A time stamp of sufficient precision can safely be considered unique”, “My software is only used internally\/locally, so I don\u2019t have to worry about time-zones” and “Places have only one official address”.<\/p>\n

Twenty years ago, naive applications assumed gender<\/strong> was an unremarkable, immutable, single-bit attribute; current interpretation of the 2010 Equality Act elevates such data design choices into the realm of legal consequences.<\/p>\n

I don’t know what the world of even the near future will be, and I’m sceptical of those who say they do. A few trends are so potent and certain, though, that they deserve our attention before they surprise us.<\/p>\n

Traditional banks aren’t set in stone<\/h3>\n

From their material architecture to their public relations style, banks make an impression of permanence and gravity. This is just a cultural convention, though. The rising generation in industrial countries goes about its business with less and less use of cash and cheques, and often without traditional banking at all.<\/p>\n

In 2012, the World Bank wrote about the “problem” of the unbanked<\/a>. It increasingly appears that many of the world’s young and poor \u2013 a majority of the world population still! \u2013 will meet their needs without ever joining the ranks of the “banked”. They don\u2019t seem themselves losing the banking game; they aren\u2019t even playing that game.<\/p>\n

Credit cards may face similar changes. At the same time as global credit-card use continues to grow around 3 percent annually, such alternative practices as Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) are exploding at a rate of over 22% per annum. While BNPL brings its own risks for consumers, vendors, and the larger economy, these factors may remain secondary in the face of marketplace adoption. If you’re a financial programmer, you need to learn not just Angular and continuous integration (CI), but also the BNPL vocabulary.<\/p>\n

Super apps<\/h3>\n

These shifts in consumer finance complement the “Rise of the Super App<\/a>“. For more and more people \u2013 perhaps a majority, before long \u2013 money lives in their mobile phones. We’re long past the times of money conceived as precious metal, money as tangible currency, or even money as figures on a full-sized computer screen. Behemoth computing platforms like WeChat, Facebook, and Snapchat are where consumers and businesses conduct their social and economic transactions.<\/p>\n

Keep in mind the phenomenal growth rates involved. When usage of something like M-Pesa grows 50 percent or more each year, that necessarily means the average tenure of users is well under a year. Whatever habits or practices are accepted now might well become obsolete in just a few months with recruitment of a whole new generation of users.<\/p>\n

Devs and demographics<\/h3>\n

Further complementing these shifts are the demographics involved. Coding is the fastest-growing employment sector in the UK, with private industry adding around 25,000 programmers a year<\/a>.<\/p>\n

India graduates about ten times<\/strong> as many computer scientists and software engineers annually.<\/p>\n

Nigeria, Kenya, Egypt, and several more countries not often regarded as technology centres also appear to be growing at least tens of thousands of new programmers each year.<\/p>\n

The point is not to fear these changes, but simply to recognise their reality. The consumers and the providers<\/em> of the business applications of the coming years will have different backgrounds, expectations, and daily lifestyles from those who have dominated computing to this point.<\/p>\n

If we, as developers, insist on just sticking to the “bits and bytes”, it might soon be a challenge to keep doing what we do. There are no guarantees that the specific jobs of today will continue. When we open ourselves up just a little to new end-user expectations and populations, though, whole new worlds of opportunity<\/a> appear.<\/p>\n

Learn more<\/h3>\n