Over the past year, developers have eagerly adopted generative AI to accelerate coding and streamline their workflows. In GitLab’s latest DevSecOps survey, 78% of respondents said they are using AI for software development or plan to do so in the next two years.
In 2025, developers will broaden the scope of how they use AI with promising new applications for reducing technical debt and improving security. Developers will also use AI to modernize legacy applications that may be important to the business but were not previously considered critical enough to justify upgrading. AI will make app modernization financially viable for the first time — one of several ways that AI will start to reveal its ROI.
However, AI will not be the only big software story in 2025. Developers have long struggled with the busy work of managing too many disconnected software tools and frameworks. Next year, integrated development platforms will become more widespread, streamlining workflows and freeing developers’ time to do more engaging, important work. We will also see DevSecOps practices in embedded and IoT systems development increase, boosting security and productivity in this growing area.
The following are my top five predictions for the evolution of software development in 2025.
The ROI of AI-Based Software Development Tools Will Become Easier to Quantify
While organizations worldwide have quickly adopted AI for software development, many still struggle to measure its impact across diverse teams and business functions. Next year, organizations will become more sophisticated about measuring the return on their AI investments and better understand the value this technology can provide.
This starts with looking more closely at specific outcomes. Instead of asking a broad question like, ‘How is AI helping my organization?’ leaders should study the impact of AI on tasks, such as test generation, documentation or language translation, and measure the gains in efficiency and productivity for these activities.
By examining the tasks where AI excels, companies can more effectively quantify the ROI of AI initiatives and justify further investment in these technologies. With executive boards looking closely at AI costs and demanding accountability, more leaders will take this approach next year and provide concrete metrics for ROI.
Gen AI Will Make Large-Scale App Modernization Viable for the First Time
While app modernization has long been a stated goal for businesses, the cost of updating applications has been a significant barrier. Organizations have avoided modernizing smaller operational systems, such as internal portals and back-office tools because the expected benefits did not justify the expense. Tolerating a certain level of risk and inefficiency was considered the better option.
Generative AI will make wide-scale app modernization a reality. AI lowers the cost and complexity of re-architecting and updating older systems, making it feasible to see a meaningful ROI from modernization projects in as little as one year.
This shift finally makes large-scale application modernization practical for many essential but often overlooked systems that keep an organization running.
AI-Powered Vulnerability Remediation Will be a Game-Changer
While developers already work at breakneck speed today, technical debt is a persistent issue. The most worrying consequence of this debt is vulnerabilities that can creep into code and go unnoticed or unfixed. Next year, developers will expand their use of AI in software development to significantly reduce technical debt and increase the security of their code.
Technical debt often occurs when developers choose an easy or quick solution instead of a better approach that takes longer. Vulnerabilities result when the code is poorly structured, not sufficiently reviewed or when testing is rushed or incomplete.
Developers will tackle this head-on next year using AI-powered tools to assist with coding. These tools can automatically identify, explain and even fix vulnerabilities in the code they write. While these fixes will need to be reviewed and approved by a human, they can make development faster and highlight problems that make code less secure. The result will be more time for developers to focus on other important work while improving overall software security.
Embedded Systems Development Will be a Significant Focus in 2025
With nearly every device now powered by software, embedded systems and IoT development are outpacing traditional server-side software. As a result, organizations will pay increased attention to DevSecOps principles and tools to develop this type of software.
While DevOps combines development and operations into a more streamlined whole, DevSecOps embeds security into each step of the process. Embedded systems development needs to catch up with these principles, but that will finally change in 2025.
This shift will help developers address the unique challenges of embedded systems development, such as hardware-in-the-loop testing and the need to integrate software updates with diverse and constrained hardware environments.
A DevSecOps process is well-suited to address these challenges, thus software teams will evolve their practices and tools next year to accommodate the growth in IoT and embedded systems development.
Platform Engineering Will Relieve Much of the Burden on Developers
Unproductive tasks that consume significant time but go unseen by the broader organization are overextending developers. These tasks include orchestrating and maintaining tools, managing development processes and adapting to fast-changing needs.
Organizations can overcome these challenges by adopting integrated development platforms that handle these operational and security tasks at the portfolio level. Next year, we will see wider use of these platforms to relieve the burden on developers.
Integrating development, security and operations into a unified process has been an important transition to reduce silos among teams, but doing so created significant complexity. The shift left movement correctly identified the need for earlier involvement in critical processes, but it also unnecessarily burdened engineers.
In 2025, we will see a significant shift: Everything beyond application development will be abstracted to the portfolio level through centralized platforms, marking the decoupling of ‘development’ from ‘everything else.’”
Toward a More Secure, Productive Year
Pivotal trends championing efficiency, security and innovation will spur software development to evolve dramatically next year. Generative AI, a key player in this transformation, will expand its value by enhancing security and enabling large-scale application modernization while organizations begin to recognize its ROI.
Alongside AI, the focus on integrated development platforms will relieve developers from mundane tasks and allow them to concentrate on more rewarding work. The extension of DevSecOps to embedded and IoT development will continue the industry-wide commitment to security and productivity.
If 2024 was a year of experimentation and learning, 2025 will see many of these learnings coming to fruition, delivering on the promise to make software development more efficient, rewarding and secure.
