Software Engineering Challenges in the Next 20 Years
Technology and the digital world, we cannot live without it! Technological advancements have enabled changed, and will continue to transform ordinary life. The computer, which was initially a tool for work and a desktop in the home, has evolved to virtually all aspects of our day to day life and society.
What will be the challenges facing the software engineering profession be like in 20 years? How will technology advance? Moore’s law, which was primary against technological advancements, states that “every 12 to 18 months, we will see semi-conductors doubling up in performance and value" (Mack, C n.d). The growing demand for the usage of software in industry, commercial and research, have contributed to the complexity, for software development and software engineering. This demonstrates the need for the higher-level concept for software systems in order to develop real-world systems that are designed to meet the further challenges facing software engineering industry.
For example, an industry that was initially a paper based, and has embraced technology, with the inclusion of neural networks. With a mortgage or credit card application, the human element in the decision-making process has been removed, and it's a neural network (BBC, 2011) making the decision. The financial trading industries, within the subdivision of Quantitative Finance, to trade shares and predict future market movements, the predictions and calculations are carried out far quicker and with greater accuracy. While this is a major achievement; the financial industry may become a complete non-human transaction. The industrial manufacturing industry, all the enhancements in technology have improved the accuracy and manufacturing processes, resulting with the human component, being removed. Industry has become an intelligent computer, there are airliners that can navigate and land by just a computer and external sensors proving all the relevant information that the pilot would use, and soon navigate by them, and the pilots will be there to observe the instruments only.
In conclusion, with all these advancements, the software engineering profession will have to keep up with the advancements, development and further improvements with current methodologies. We will see the standalone operating-system merge into the larger distributed computing-systems, cloud computing taking a more prominent role. The current situation will continue and evolve into more software-intensive systems with ever increasing demands to provide a stable, secure and reliable system to help cope with the ever increasing demands and size of data and information available.
Reference
Mack, C n.d., 'Fifty Years of Moore's Law', IEEE Transactions On Semiconductor Manufacturing, 24, 2, pp. 202-207, Science Citation Index, EBSCOhost, viewed 26 September 2017
RBS - Inside The Bank That Ran Out Of Money (2011) [DVD] United Kingdom: BBC.