IT trends to watch in 2023

The technology landscape is constantly evolving. The rapid pace of change, combined with the complexity of modern technologies and the proliferation of options, can make it difficult to keep up with and to make informed decisions.

As experts in the field and technology enthusiasts, we do our best to stay up-to-date, share our insights and come up with predictions about what we believe will be the next exciting thing in technology. This year we also invited external experts we know and value to enrich our 2023 Tech Trends digest.

At the end of 2021 we noticed that OpenAI’s GPT-3 was available to the public without any waitlist and made an assumption that it would be for sure leveraged in 2022. The result was even more impressive than we could have hoped for. Have a look at what else we got right here.

Fast forward to 2022. Most notably, the COVID-19 pandemic eased in many countries. But overall, 2022 brought more bad news than good news: war in Ukraine, growing recession, the hiring freezes or even massive layoffs in FAANG companies. But was it all so bad?

Let’s dive into this year's technology trends digest powered with a dash of engineering approach!

I wrote this post with Maria Wachal, our tech evangelist. Have a great read and Happy 2023!

The rise of Rust

Rust language was created already in 2006 by Mozilla employee, but this year it is thriving! According to GitHub it saw more than 50% popularity increase. It was also marked as top loved & wanted language in Stack Overflow Developer Survey 2022.

Rust offers great features related to memory safety and concurrency. It focuses on performance and has become an alternative to using C or C++. It found its niche in operating systems & tooling. Linux supports Rust in its kernel since version 6.1. Android 13 is the first Android version where the majority of new code is written in Rust. Thanks to that Android observed a huge drop in the number of memory safety vulnerabilities. Some JavaScript tools migrated to Rust as well, allowing for huge performance improvements.

We’re seeing that companies are leveraging it for performance-sensitive microservices. If you expect huge traffic and need high concurrency & low memory usage - it may be for you. With positive developers experience, we expect Rust popularity to grow further in 2023.

No-code / low-code philosophy

The no-code / low-code philosophy aims to democratize software development by making it accessible to a wider range of professionals. It allows individuals who may not have programming skills to utilize pre-existing code blocks and create unique software.

On the market there are a lot of no-code platforms that require no coding skills at all to be creative and design specific apps. In our organization for example we use: Webflow for designing and developing websites and Zapier for automating tasks and integrating different software tools.

More and more businesses are taking advantage of no-code tools to turn their employees into citizen developers. This for sure introduces increased productivity and efficiency, but on the other hand requires investment into training and implementing the necessary security measures.

Last year we said that businesses will continue to require custom solutions, more sophisticated applications still require IT or engineers’ work. But low-code tools can help engineers quickly create an app, test a scenario or solve a common problem. Gartner estimates that “by 2024, low-code application development will be responsible for more than 65% of application development activity.”

Recently, we’ve seen some very interesting low-code tools that in our opinion look promising:

• AWS Application Composer - it enables developers to visually design and build serverless applications quickly. Serverless applications can be complex to design, especially for those new to building them. Providing an initial configuration that can be amended by more advanced builders can be helpful for these individuals, as it can serve as a starting point for their design process. Additionally, having a pre-configured set of best practices for designing serverless applications can ensure that good operational practices are followed.
• Copilot - where low-code meets AI. The tool aims to increase the productivity of skilled programmers by providing assistance in tasks such as suggesting improvements, detecting bugs and vulnerabilities, and automatically generating common code.

John de Goes - Ziverge
In your opinion, what was the top IT/Tech event or trend of 2022?
In my view, the top trend in 2022 was the rapid innovation in the space of AI, powered by large-scale models, and I think that will continue to dominate technological innovation in 2023.

What is the next big trend in technology/IT for 2023?
Many people think AR/VR will be the Next Thing after mobile, and indeed, it's coming, but I think before we see large-scale adoption of AR/VR, AI technologies will begin rewriting the way humans interact with machines, completely reshaping IT, everything from hardware to open source to cloud providers.

And a perspective from another tech-native:

Roger Illing VP Sales CEMEA, Confluent
In your opinion, what was the top IT/Tech event or trend of 2022?
Innovations such as virtual and augmented reality are on the rise and we will see even more this year. With Metaverse capturing the market, the technology demands resources and innovation. Many companies have been already working on developments to deliver a better and broader user experience and we are only at the beginning!

What is the next big trend in technology/IT for 2023?
Along with fraud and financial crime, cyber security is increasingly top of mind for CIOs and CISOs. As we cultivate more progressive advances in security technology, cyber crimes also become more complex. Huge leaps have been taken in this area to fight these crimes over the past few years. I expect that like fraud and financial crime, cyber security will be a huge focus in 2023, and the current economy will magnify this.

Sustainability & Cleantech

This year we have visited Web Summit 2022, to get familiar with the trends. There is a visible move towards ecology, sustainability and cleantech. Among the important topics are: renewable energy, smart cities, CO2 & carbon footprint and others.

Those areas are also mentioned by other sources. Thoughtworks in the latest technology radar has mentioned Carbon Efficiency as a software architecture characteristic. All major cloud providers plan to become carbon free and add tools allowing them to measure how much CO2 your infrastructure is using to their offerings.

We can see CO2 savings are also important for clients. Codos Foundation plans to lower CO2 emissions by rewarding commuters for switching to more ecological ways of transportation. Their application, using Machine Learning, detects what transport mode is used and later awards the user proportionally to the amount of saved CO2 compared to the traditional car.

Dr. Igor Malinovic - Codos CTO
In your opinion, what was the top IT/Tech event or trend of 2022?
ChatGPT as a tuned version of GPT-3 is really an impressive step forward. As a negative event of the year I would definitely outline the FTX scandal.

What is the next big trend in technology/IT for 2023?
The transformer DL models and Spatial-temporal transformer networks will (it seems to me) become even more popular. I hope that the world does not fall into a hard recession in 2023, I am concerned that the market bottom has not been reached yet. I hope to see June as the month when the true recovery starts and crypto projects gain a new momentum. Polygon and Cosmos seem to be very promising projects, my favorites at the moment, Ethereum ecosystem is dominating, Polkadot is being solid, and it would be nice to see Cardano striking back.

Layoffs in Big Tech

The technology sector has had a difficult year, largely due to the underperformance of big software companies. Meta has lost 66,1% this year, Nvidia lost 45,5%, Alphabet lost 39%, Microsoft fell 28,3% and Apple lost 25,5. Data as of 19th December.

We think about Big Tech as a very stable and constantly growing sector. Although recent shifts in consumer spending patterns and a decrease in demand for tech products and services following an unusual surge in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic have disrupted its growth.

What does it mean for software developers and other skilled professionals workers and the industry?

Tomasz Rogozik, Bolt
In your opinion, what was the top IT/Tech event or trend of 2022?
For me, it was definitely the hiring freezes or even massive layoffs in FAANG companies plus Elon Musk's Twitter acquisition. This essentially diverged the trend of ever-growing Big Tech, and started the discussion about efficiency and the essential staff that's needed in these companies. I think we're yet to see how it unrolls to other markets and the SMB segments. Another trend that's related to those layoffs is the change in access to cheap funding that was available to startups and scaleups across the globe. As the interest rates went up, money moved away from the equity markets. This was a wake-up call for a lot of companies that previously focused just on hypergrowth, even if it meant keeping profitability as a distant future goal.

What is the next big trend in technology/IT for 2023?
The last few years showed us that it's best to just expect the unexpected – global pandemic, supply shortages, then NASDAQ at an all-time-high, then the Russian invasion of Ukraine, finally the inflation surge with all its consequences. I think the trend that started in 2022 of being focused on engineering efficiency, optimal spend, and organic growth is going to continue. For engineers, specifically, this might mean less risky R&D projects available to them, and more projects focused on cost cutting and short-term high-ROI investments. In my opinion, the honeymoon period of engineering salaries skyrocketing through the roof is over, or at least won't be visible at that scale in 2023.

AI & Machine Learning

Similarly to previous years, we again see growth in Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence spaces. More and more companies try to leverage ML power in their products. In 2022 we were amazed multiple times. DALL-E 2 and Stable Diffusion allow you to generate images from text description. Results can be surprising and spectacular.

On the other hand, ChatGTP, based on GRP-3 can do a lot - answer technical questions, generate code or even compose songs. Github Copilot helps engineers with everyday work. More and more areas have direct contact with ML. We expect to see this trend continue in 2023 and be amazed again.

If you’d like to learn more about trends in this field, take a look at what our colleagues, ML engineers from ReasonField Lab, prepared for you.

Read AI trends to watch in 2023

We decided to ask our questions about the trends, to our expert ChatGPT as well:

ChatGPT
In your opinion, what was the top IT/Tech event or trend of 2022?
One of the top IT/Tech events of 2022 was the widespread adoption of 5G technology. This new generation of cellular network technology offered faster speeds and improved connectivity, enabling a variety of new applications and services such as virtual reality, smart cities, and connected cars. The rollout of 5G was accompanied by intense competition among tech companies and telecommunications providers, leading to significant investments and innovations in the field.

What is the next big trend in technology/IT for 2023?
One potential trend in technology for 2023 is the continued development and implementation of artificial intelligence and machine learning. These technologies have already shown significant potential in various industries, and continued advancements in their capabilities and applications are expected to drive further innovation and disruption across multiple sectors. Additionally, there may be a greater focus on privacy and security measures as more personal and sensitive data is collected and used by AI systems.

Piotr Woldan, Evorain
In your opinion, what was the top AI/ML event or trend of 2022?
The development of interpretability trends is visible in publications of reputable scientific institutions such as Stanford or the University of Toronto, as well as the significant development of machine learning algorithms for natural language processing. The support of electronic systems with artificial intelligence algorithms is also noticeable.

What is the next big trend in AI/ML for 2023?
I bet on very advanced recommendation systems based on cross-domain processing that combine content such as image, text, or structured data. The world has already gathered a lot of data to start such initiatives.

What is your take on IT trends 2023?

We're curious what your engineering eye has spotted and what in your opinion we will see more of in the upcoming year. Share your trends in the comments!

Do you want to be up to date with technology trends? Join and get unlimited access to Data Times - a monthly dose of tech news curated by SoftwareMill's engineers.