Latest Trends in Web Application Development - 2024

Keeping up with the latest trends in web application development is essential to being on the leading edge. Here is a summary of some things to watch for in 2024.

The internet has become more integrated into our everyday lives with each passing year. We use it for everything, including news reading, banking, and grocery delivery. The epidemic is driving an increasing amount of our lives online, which means programmers are in high demand due to the vast range of tasks they can do.

This might be a helpful approach to getting an idea of what's popular right now if you're just learning about this field and have not yet learned what a web developer truly does for a living.

With the year coming to an end, I wonder what lies ahead. Are some trends in web application development going to expand into other areas of our lives and introduce new, confusing, popular terms?

Artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence (AI) used to be a hot topic of discussion anytime someone discussed technology direction. But it is warranted. It's no secret that artificial intelligence and web app development  have advanced significantly over the past year.

ChatGPT had its most successful year in 2023. The word "hallucinate" was chosen as the Cambridge Dictionary's Word of the Year for a cause unrelated to psychedelics. In the future, generative AI technology will be accessible to the general public through the most prominent technology companies, including Microsoft, Google, and Meta (previously Facebook).

Given improved access to AI tools, we anticipate developers using AI in novel and inventive ways in the next year. Furthermore, data analytics currently extensively uses AI, so expect others to do the same. Copilot from GitHub is just one of several AI programming tools that are inadvertently entering developers' daily routines.

Low-code and no-code tools

Should I include this as one of the trends in web applications? It seems logical that low-code and no-code solutions would discourage individuals from learning to code.

Computers are not coming to steal your job, even if their sustained popularity is partly a response to the same lack of coding skills that made web app development a successful profession. To be more precise, we still need to instruct developers on how to use the LC:NC tools.

Internet of Things (IoT)

Although the Internet of Things has long been hailed as the future, some may believe it is already complete. It is only getting started for non-internet-connected things to gain network access so they can transmit and receive data.

Web app developers may have needed a more direct hand in making these gadgets; it would have been the responsibility of product designers, while UI designers relied more on voice user interfaces. Developers of apps that analyze and display data from devices are called coders. Businesses like Xively and BugLabs have already begun developing APIs that developers can use to interact with Internet of Things devices.

AI chatbots

These may have existed in prior years. However, given the success of generative AI and LLMs last year, we anticipate a significant increase in this field of work in 2024.

This may be attributed, in large part, to the fact that these chatbots' sophistication and accuracy have elevated their employment potential for businesses.

Opportunities for backend developers are abundant in terms of the technology supporting them, as their success depends on sophisticated language processing, machine learning, and information retrieval systems. Popular AI careers include machine learning and AI engineering. Web app developers who are proficient in machine learning languages like Python, R, and Java will have plenty of options and fascinating projects to work on.

This is one reason to speculate whether this trend will last longer. Businesses that use chatbots on their social media platforms save money by eliminating customer service representatives. However, they also expand their consumer base.

Angular 17 and beyond

A revised version of Angular, which debuted in 2016, brought a host of improvements, including a whole revamp of Google's frontend JavaScript framework. Applications are now written in TypeScript, which utilizes JavaScript ES6 and has shifted to a more component-driven design.

In addition to backward compatibility, Angular now has a more consistent release schedule. Angular 18.0 is scheduled for release in May 2024.

Yarn package manager

Package managers, particularly in the frontend JavaScript community, are prevalent technologies.

They make installing, updating, configuring, and removing code modules from inside programs simpler for developers. They handle the different dependencies code modules typically have by interacting with a registry of code modules.

The two most widely used JavaScript package managers are Bower and NPM. But Meta, together with Exponent, Google, and Tilde, created a package management system. Its popularity is predicted to rise.

Yarn tries to fix Meta's NPM problems, especially consistency, security, and speed. This updated package management system still has access to Bower and NPM registries.

When using NPM, developers may have two distinct versions of a particular module in their local development environment. This is based on the sequence in which modules are installed. This may lead to problems where everything works well on one developer's computer but not another. To ensure that all developer computers have the same version loaded, Yarn employs lock files to connect modules to a specific version inside a project.

Static website generators

Static website generators build webpages using plain text saved in files rather than databases. Static webpages created using Jekyll might have benefits.

They handle traffic spikes and provide enhanced speed, security, and deployment simplicity.

Nevertheless, they lack user-generated material (like comments) and real-time content, which are now "musts" on the internet. Many developers believe that static site generators will be a fascinating space to monitor in the next year as Content Delivery Networks and APIs become more and more integrated into the web's architecture, simplifying content deployment and templates.

VUI and voice search

We hear you argue, "But voice recognition technology has been around for more than ten years." However, things are really accelerating in 2024. These days, we're not just talking about Amazon Alexa and other smart speakers.

Statista predicts the speech recognition industry will increase at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 23.7%, from $10 billion in 2021 to $50 billion in 2029. Generative AI may be included in voice search, and Google has already done so with Assistant.

Although we've previously discussed how to become a voice user interface designer, prospective web app developers should also learn how to make every product they work on—especially mobile apps—voice search and navigation-friendly. Due to our significant progress, this is now a necessity rather than a nice-to-have.

Final thoughts

Especially in web app development services, nothing stays still for very long on the internet. There will always be changes in the way we deal with information, since information is constantly evolving.

Trends in web application development may change over time, but knowing the basics can benefit you in the long run. Before you join a trend or carve out a niche for yourself, be sure you have everything covered.