My personal take on developing for the 'cloud'

I am getting more interested in the future 'shape' of developer environments in the context of decentralized computing. How development projects will plug-in to things like Kupernetes, IPFS, smart contracts (Ethererium).

I will no doubt have to shift out of a developer role one day- but my passion is still developing, tinkering and designing. The designer/artist in me still wants to pursue simple elegant solutions. The engineer in me wants to make something that will last. The irony is, nothing lasts very long. Paradigms are changing so fast, that it seems any solution can inevitably be considered 'wrong' to some degree in less than a year.

I think software has reached a pinnacle of success when the intent of the client has been fulfilled with the least amount of 'control semantics'. This 'sweet spot' can become the only consistent measure of the success of any designed module.

Integrated debugger environments (IDEs)

I cannot help but believe we will see better dev environments sitting directly on revision control systems which can work closer to the release pipeline and not be so reliant on client side project environments. - a Google docs like dev environment.

Agile concerns

Agile without TDD/BDD is a weaponized version of RAD (Rapid Application Development). I am very excited to see how things like Ethereum's "smart contracts" can be used as part of the software release process, and remove a lot of the inherent complexities/bottlenecks of relying on carbon life forms.

My short term professional bucket list:

1. Deepen knowledge of refactoring monolithic applications to micro-services. 
2. Setup a development environment that has a working on premise cloud delivery process. Something like Frabric8 (Fabricate).
3. Deepen knowledge of Kupernetes.
4. Deepen knowledge of truly distributed apps on IPFS (permanent web). (Know all anti-patterns that hinder process).
5. Tinker with smart contracts to drive Agile software deliveries.