Returning to Coding Professionally Link to heading

After taking some time away from professional software development, stepping back into the industry in 2020 has been both exciting and overwhelming. The pace of change in our field never ceases to amaze me, and the landscape looks quite different from when I last worked full-time as a developer.

What’s Changed Link to heading

The most obvious change is the sheer number of JavaScript frameworks and the maturity of the ecosystem. When I last worked professionally, Vue.js was still relatively new, and the idea of server-side rendering with Node.js was just gaining traction. Now, we have Nuxt.js, Vite, and a dozen other frameworks that make building complex web applications feel almost trivial.

The tooling ecosystem has also matured significantly. ESLint, Prettier, and TypeScript have become standard parts of most JavaScript projects. The days of debugging mysterious type errors in production seem largely behind us, at least for teams that embrace these tools.

The Remote Work Revolution Link to heading

One of the most significant shifts has been the normalisation of remote work, even before the pandemic made it a necessity. Companies that were once strictly in-office are now embracing distributed teams. This has opened up opportunities for developers in smaller cities and regional areas to work for companies they never could have before.

The tooling for remote collaboration has improved dramatically. Slack, Zoom, and GitHub have become the holy trinity of remote development work. The asynchronous communication patterns that remote work demands have actually improved many teams’ documentation and decision-making processes.

Cloud-First Development Link to heading

Everything is cloud-first now. AWS, Google Cloud Platform, and Azure have become as fundamental to modern development as HTML and CSS were to web development in the early 2000s. The concept of “devops” computing with services like AWS Lambda has changed how we think about architecture and scaling.

The Infrastructure as Code movement has made deploying and managing complex systems more predictable and version-controlled. Tools like Terraform and CloudFormation have become essential skills for any developer working on systems that need to scale.

New Challenges, New Opportunities Link to heading

While the technical landscape has evolved rapidly, some fundamental challenges remain the same. Good software design, clear communication, and understanding user needs are still the most important skills a developer can have.

What’s exciting is how these new tools and practices can help us solve problems that were much harder to tackle before. The barrier to building and deploying sophisticated applications has never been lower, which means we can focus more on solving actual business problems rather than wrestling with infrastructure.

Moving Forward Link to heading

As I settle back into professional development, I’m reminded why I love this field. The constant learning, the problem-solving, and the satisfaction of building something that people actually use and find valuable. The technology may change, but the fundamental joy of creation through code remains constant.

The challenge now is staying current while not chasing every shiny new framework or service. The key is to understand the problems these new tools solve and evaluate whether they’re the right fit for your specific context.

Looking ahead, I’m excited to dive deeper into cloud architecture, modern JavaScript frameworks, and the emerging patterns around microservices and containerisation. There’s never been a more exciting time to be a developer, and I’m grateful to be back in the thick of it.

What changes have you noticed in the development landscape over the past few years? How has your approach to staying current with new technologies evolved?