There is an interesting and appropriate “spot the difference” Microsoft Visual Studio An advertisement that used to be published in a computing magazine.
On the left side of the image is the desk of an “unhappy” software developer. It's midnight now. Under the gaze of a single desk lamp, mangled piles of paper litter the scene, and yellow sticky notes dangle from a computer screen.
The right side shows the desk of a “happy” software developer. It's clean and tidy, you have a calendar full of social events, and it's a sunny day outside.
The message was clear. It means that developers will feel less stressed if they use his C++, a popular programming language that allows them to develop software regardless of the platform.
Almost two decades later, technology has advanced, but software developers still face many of the same challenges. How do you handle the entire lifecycle of creating a product for your customers, from designing the software to making sure it works and is secure? , to deployment and maintenance of the finished product?
Scaling up and down is smooth
Cloud platforms greatly simplify developers' lives, from planning, writing, editing, and debugging code to delivering it live to customers, even when they don't know what the final requirements will look like. .
Previously, software companies delivered applications and services to customers and then had to guess how much infrastructure was needed to support product delivery and maintenance.
This problem can be further exacerbated by the fact that customers may be struggling to meet highly fluctuating demand from end users.
Azure's scalable cloud platform solves this problem by hosting your software and automatically scaling it as demand increases or decreases, allowing you to focus on what you do best: software development. .
Consider the following case live tech games (LTG) etc. The company was faced with the challenge of supporting 10,000 users simultaneously playing a live football tournament multiplayer mobile game online, a number he needed to increase to 500,000.
“During the 2022 FIFA World Cup, in partnership with ITV, we ran over 30 live tournament games with thousands of players competing simultaneously, and thanks to Azure, everything went perfectly. ” says the LTG co-founder. Co-CEO Samuel Worsley.
Develop and debug all in one place
Software development is a complex process. Especially when there are many cooks involved and everyone, including the boss, has different ideas about what coding language the software should be written in.
“If you like working in one programming language and your colleague likes working in another, that's not a problem with Visual Studio,” says Microsoft UK Head of Digital and Application Innovation, Data and Artificial Intelligence. Director Denise Dourado said. .
Visual Studio is an integrated development environment that allows developers to write, edit, and debug code in one place instead of moving from tool to tool.
“Without Visual Studio, you end up designing code in one place and having to debug it in another place. It takes time,” says Dourado.
The worst thing for developers, she says, is that when they switch from one tool to another, they worry about what will happen to their code, making the development process take a long time.
Audit software is easy
You've built your software, but now you need to deploy and maintain it, which can be a huge headache.Here is Azure DevOp Services Come in.
Azure DevOps can be used collaboratively by multiple people to track changes made to software source code and release them to customers in a live environment.
In addition, at a time of global economic uncertainty, there is a real need to reduce costs and improve efficiency while providing added value to customers whose businesses are undergoing significant digital transformation.
Mobile phone company Vodafone realized that it had too many computer systems within the company and many different code repositories for all of its software. Some control systems relied on Word documents to manually track source code changes.
“At the time, we could automatically roll back a deployment to see specifically which line of code caused the problem, link to the developer, and see why we did something like that. It took us a long time to be able to do that,” says Ben Connolly. Head of Digital Engineering at Vodafone.
“it has been Revolutionize with the power of Azure DevOps. It's all pipeline now, and it's much more auditable than what we had before. ”
Improved productivity
Artificial intelligence (AI) is also increasingly helping developers solve pain points. GitHub, the world's largest code repository and social software development community, leverages AI in the following ways: GitHub Copilot.
“GitHub Copilot provides enhanced features for developers, including suggesting code improvements, identifying common coding errors, and helping developers understand the codebase faster, especially for developers new to the project. ,” adds Dourado.
According to GitHub, 46% of new code is now written by AI, overall developer productivity has increased by 55%, and 75% of developers on the platform are looking to be more creative with their software development. They report that they are now able to concentrate on specific areas.
Software development has been democratized
Microsoft wants to take things a step further by “democratizing” the IT industry and making it possible for people without a software development background to build software, Dourado said. “We're bringing in users from the business environment and allowing them to build programs without necessarily understanding code,” she added.
for example, Azure cognitive services You can automate document processing, improve customer service, understand the root causes of anomalies, and extract insights from content.
“The world of technology is constantly changing, especially around things like AI, and if you are a developer, it may not be your core skill. We’re trying to make it possible to leverage AI without spending months or years,” says Dourado.
“What's important to me is that I don't have to struggle to learn new technology and have more freedom to be creative and take advantage of the features of the application.”
Source: www.theguardian.com
