Thanks to the availability of data and cloud computing, the pace at which AI is progressing is incredible. Аrtificial intelligence (AI) technologies are currently meeting the expectations of people after several years of development and testing.
AI applications are visible in Amazon’s Alexa, Google Photos and autonomous cars such as those made by Tesla. Since these applications are common these days, there is speculation regarding how they will affect software development. Most people can’t wait to see how they will change the jobs of software testers and developers.
AI and Machine Learning in Software Development
As machine learning is gaining more capabilities, it is exciting to note that AI is progressing to other sectors. In software development, AI seeks to enable programmers and testers to be more efficient in their work. AI also aims at helping these experts in making quicker progress in their work. These experts will benefit from a wide range of machine-learning capabilities that weren’t accessible to them in the past hence enabling them to develop more functional software programs.
AI enables developers to create more reliable and advanced software programs using various machine learning models. They can also use the models in monitoring and understanding how data flows in their programs. The good thing about AI applications is that they can give logical ways of resolving an issue. Software developers can rely on them to adjust parts of a certain code until they produce their expected output.
How AI and Machine Learning are Transforming Software Development
AI technologies prove to be good at increasing efficiency in software development tasks. Programmers are adopting these technologies as they understand how beneficial they are. These technologies are instrumental in nurturing young programmers and helping developers to identify and fix bugs in their programs. These technologies also provide developers cloud-based IDEs, intelligent coding platforms and the convenience of carrying out deployment control.
Help to Nurture Young Programmers
Young programmers form an important part of the developer community just like the seasoned ones. AI seeks to give these programmers an opportunity of gaining better insights on how to develop good software programs. There are AI-powered tools that enable developers to collaborate on software projects. These tools also give them the convenience of sharing insights with both young and experienced programmers hence enabling them to learn from one another. Young programmers can make use of such tools to advance their careers.
Help Developers and Testers to Spot and Patch Bugs
Thanks to AI, developers can now code better, spot bugs and fix them. They don’t have to worry about ending up with executable files that are full of bugs. Developers also get the convenience of using certain machine-learning algorithms in testing software programs. This effort aims at improving the overall quality of the tested program. Besides developers, testers can also use AI-powered bots in finding software bugs.
As AI is advancing, developers and testers look forward to using AI-powered tools like AIOps with the ability to find software flaws and automatically fix the code. Just recently, the Defense Advanced Projects Agency (DARPA) held a workshop for developing automated and autonomous systems for detecting, evaluating and patching software bugs. This conference aimed at improving cybersecurity.
Deployment Control
AI technologies also promise to increase the efficiency in deployment control activities related to software development. In the software development realm, deployment control entails the development phase where developers upgrade programs or applications to new versions. When the developers fail to execute this process properly, they risk ruining the software program or application. Thanks to AI, software developers can run new versions of an application or program without worrying about risks such as failed deployment. They can also scan for problems related to the deployment process using machine-learning algorithms.
Intelligent coding
When writing code, programmers may experience challenges such as code duplication or omission of certain parts of the code. Using coding tools powered by machine-learning algorithms, they can no longer make mistakes when coding. These tools can help to identify simple coding mistakes. They also provide a programmer with a code editor that formats parts of the code based on the programming or methodology or language in use.
Introduction to Cloud-based Integrated Development Environments
Integrated development environments (IDE) provide programmers a place to edit, debug and compile their code. Programmers experienced relief when such platforms went online. With cloud-based IDEs, one can write and store code on the Internet. These platforms provide software developers a safe and convenient place for working with their code. Losing their work after their personal computers or laptops go missing or crash should no longer be amongst their top worries.
Among the renowned cloud-based IDEs is Amazon’s Cloud 9. This platform provides software developers an IDE that synchronizes the input data with a cloud computing platform that Amazon provides. Through such platforms, developers can develop the next generation of apps. They can also make use of the intelligent coding features that cloud-based IDEs offer them.
Conclusion
Just because AI is proving to simplify certain tasks related to software development, it doesn’t mean that developers and testers will lose their jobs in the future. It requires technical skill and experience to be able to develop an executable program. People should note that AI aims to help developers and testers to be productive and efficient in their work. Though AI is transforming the software development cycle, it won’t affect activities such as integration and coding that rely on technical programming skills.
