Intelligence is Coming, Where Should the Software Development Industry Go

Recently, the A-share market index continued to adjust downward, with the Shanghai index fell by 24 points and the trading volume of the two markets reaching CNY 870 billion. Institutional capital continued to flow out, with a net outflow of about CNY 8.2 billion. The top five sectors of capital inflow were software development, IT services, games, power grid equipment and other sector. Among them, the total inflow of software development was CNY 829 million, which continued to rise.

In recent years, under the wave of information technology such as artificial intelligence, cloud computing and big data, China’s software development industry has developed rapidly. The size of the software development business market has reached 5.5 trillion in 2017, of which the income from information technology services accounts for the highest proportion, reaching 53.3%. In the context of intellectualization and digitalization, people’s requirements for information technology are constantly increasing. The new generation of information technology is turning to intelligent software as the leading factor. The importance of software products and software development in the information industry is rapidly increasing. In the process of innovation and development of software development industry, software development talents play an important role.

ZHOU Jiran, a senior software development expert and senior back-end engineer, has been deeply involved in the field of software development for many years. He has witnessed the rapid development of the software industry along the way from a PHP engineer to a senior back-end engineer. “The iteration of future software development needs data intelligence to drive R&D intelligence. The so-called data intelligence refers to the processing, analysis and mining of massive data based on big data engine, through large-scale machine learning and deep learning and other technologies, to extract valuable information and knowledge contained in the data, so as to make the data have the characteristic of intelligence. What’s more, it can also seek solutions to existing problems and realize prediction through establishing models.” Years of project experience and insight into the future development trend of the industry have made ZHOU Jiran pay more attention to the innovation and intelligence of software development projects. Therefore, in project development, he can always achieve the goals beyond expectations. On the other hand, with his keen insight and strong technological research and development strength, many of his independently developed cutting-edge technical achievements have been introduced and applied by many domestic enterprises, which has played an important role in accelerating the realization of industrial upgrading and model innovation.

ZHOU Jiran’s attitude towards intelligent software development is reflected in his technical achievements – “Intelligent Database Operation Platform Based on Inception Algorithm”, “Software Defect Prediction System Based on Convolution Neural Network” and “Software Self-development System Based on Big Data and Multidimensional Information”. He pointed out that data relevance is the basis of data intelligence and the main driving force of software R&D intelligence. Research and development of big data relevance analysis and application can effectively support data intelligence. “The existing software R&D model lacks an automated quality evaluation mechanism. I think the ideal R&D model is to provide timely and accurate assistance to R&D personnel at the right time in an efficient way, which comes from the intelligence of a series of links including platform, management, design, development, testing, and solutions.”

“The intellectualization of software development cannot be imagined out of thin air. It is necessary to drive software development through business practice to obtain the experience of intelligent research and development and the maximum comprehensive income.” ZHOU Jiran once tested the smallest testable unit in the software, such as a function in the program code, which can effectively improve the code quality, but cannot directly improve the overall quality of the whole system. “End-to-end testing is to test the application together with the system. It is to verify the function of the whole system from the user’s point of view to see whether the software system meets the user’s expectations from the start to the end. However, there is one disadvantage of end-to-end testing, which is that this kind of testing is often manually operated by developers, and the degree of automation is extremely weak.” Therefore, ZHOU Jiran believes that the first step towards intelligent software development in the future is to drive the automation of software development through business practice, and let architects, researchers and testers design software with the help of intelligent technology on the basis of in-depth understanding of user scenarios. It can not only improve the simplicity and cohesion of the code and reduce coupling, but also help build the correct software system architecture, maximizing the comprehensive income of software system application and promotion.

As for the young talents who are pouring into the field of software development, ZHOU Jiran gave a suggestion: “Like other fields, the value of software development is to persist and take the initiative to attack. For new comers, take the initiative to find difficulties. In the process of solving every bug, your logical thinking will also grow rapidly.”

The Internet of Things, big data, cloud computing, artificial intelligence, virtual reality, blockchain and other new generation information technologies are accelerating the pace of innovation and intelligent application of software development. In the future, a complete intelligent software ecosystem will be slowly built. Meanwhile, with the support of intelligent technology, the technology, products and business model of the software industry will gradually mature and evolve into more advanced intelligent control, intelligent prediction, intelligent decision-making and other services, providing new impetus for industrial innovation and development.（Author: KUANG Lu）