In recent years, the web has been getting more and more part of our daily lives. We use it for everything, from shopping to banking to reading our news. The demand for web development talent is as high as ever, and the scope of what developers can do is huge!

•  Artificial intelligence

AlphaGo, a program built by Google DeepMind, became the first program to beat a professional Go player.
AlphaGo, a program built by Google DeepMind, became the first program to beat a professional Go player.

Some of the biggest tech companies, such as Google, Microsoft and Facebook, have been releasing their AI technology to be used by the public. Artificial intelligence is already used by large applications, either to improve search engines, like in Google’s case, or in Wikipedia’s case to identify inaccurate or damaged articles.
With easier access to the necessary tools for AI development, we can expect developers to start using AI in new and different ways in the new year.

• Virtual reality
• Internet of Things (IoT)
• Rails 5
  • Turbolinks 5 allows developers to create Single Page like Applications directly from the Rails stack, by allowing links to fetch full HTML pages and replacing the body, without the need for client-side JavaScript frameworks.
  • ActionCable is a new way to use websockets in Rails to create real time applications. This makes creating notifications and chat features so much easier, all the while still having access to all your ActiveRecord resources.
  • Rails 5 also merged the popular rails_api gem into its codebase. Developers can now easily create API only applications in Rails and hook them up to their favorite JavaScript or native frameworks.
  • Angular 2 2016 also saw the release of Angular 2, and with it came a lot of changes – Google’s frontend JavaScript framework has been completely redesigned. It now takes advantage of JavaScript ES6’s features, applications are written in TypeScript, and they now moved towards a more component driven architecture.
  • Yarn package manager Package managers are incredibly popular tools, especially in the frontend JavaScript communities. They make it easier for developers to install, update, configure and uninstall code modules within their applications. They do so by communicating with a registry of code modules and manage the various dependencies code modules usually have. The most popular JavaScript package managers are NPM and Bower. However, a new package manager has been developed by Facebook, in collaboration with Exponent, Google and Tilde. We expect its popularity to grow in 2017.
  • Static website generators 2016 also saw the release of Angular 2, and with it came a lot of changes – Google’s frontend JavaScript framework has been completely redesigned. It now takes advantage of JavaScript ES6’s features, applications are written in TypeScript, and they now moved towards a more component driven architecture. As Content Delivery Networks and APIs become more and more the way of life of the web and make it easier for content and templates to be deployed, many devs think static site generators might be an interesting area to watch in the coming year.
  • Web design evolution Movement based interfaces will probably become a staple on the web. Perhaps when combined with libraries such as tracking.js, interfaces that respond to hand movements could be closer than we think. Bolder and larger typography is likely to become more prevalent. People often want engaging and compelling ways to get their information quickly. This will likely elicit a rise in the use of videos and other storytelling visuals.