At the end of the year, we ran through the things that made the biggest difference for front-end developers in 2014. But what about the future? In 2015, what’s the state of play for some of the most important new (and old) technology in web development, and what is there to look forward too? Here’s the run down of some projects in which we’re invested for the coming twelve months.
Node/Io.js
At the end of last year, Node forked due to a difference of opinion on how to run things. Some thought this spelled disaster. In our opinion? Node’s a great project that’s only going to get better. The Io branch will add innovation, whether the projects continue to exist in parallel or merge again downstream. (The first official release in January already looks meaty.) Perhaps even more important than the tech itself – the future of Node/Io will be add to the annals of open-source history. If the two projects can reach an amiable consensus we’ll have a great exemplar for ethical open-source and enterprise interdependence.
Neo4J
Neo4J is the datastore that stole the show for anyone trying to work with social data. Neo4J’s graph database fundamentally changes the way we think about and use relationship modelling. This isn’t a blip or a quaint hobby – the kind of information that graph databases can deliver is changing the way we use the web. Neo4J’s devs are anticipating that a quarter of all enterprises will be using tech like theirs within three years. This year they’re investing that $20m they just made in increasing adoption. And we’re expecting to see plenty of developers investing their time in learning the ropes.
Angular2.0
The news on Angular 2.0 is so big, we’ve got a whole entire post on it. Go see what Ed G has to say about one of the biggest things to hit JavaScript since jQuery.
PHP
About once every minute somebody stops at my desk, crosses the street, or books a round ticket from Australia to tell me PHP is dead. They’re entirely wrong. In fact, in 2015 we should be getting our first look at PHP7. (We’re skipping 6, best not to ask). 2015 is set to be a good year for PHP. Now that the specifications are in place, the devs are ready to roll out new features for a new generation of PHP: there’ll be a whole new core for a faster, more modern take on the classic language.
GruntJS
A smaller player on this field, but one that’s been punching way above its weight for some time – will 2015 give us GruntJS 1.0? Grunt is a JavaScript task runner. It doesn’t even have its own Wikipedia page right now, and yet we’re hearing nothing but enthusiasm for how much it helps with workflow. Grunt built a better mouse-trap, and the world’s started beating a path to its door. Now Grunt’s developers are working on making everything more modular with easier integration and dependency management. We’re as excited for their future as they are.