The day we had to send everyone home due to the pandemic.

Nowadays, we talk about working from home as if it's the most natural thing in the world; indeed, going to the office has become an event.

But 4 years ago, working remotely at Celfocus was only for a special reason. Most of our projects weren't even prepared for remote work, and it was quite common to need to be in the office to access some of the clients' services.

About 4 years ago, I was the tech lead of a project that had such access limitations, when we saw the issue of a potential pandemic gaining more and more dimension. In this way, together with the project's delivery manager, we took the initiative to start preparing the project for the eventual need to leave the office and start working from home. In just one week, we managed to make it possible to work on the project from home with very few limitations still to be addressed, yet, with even more alarming news coming in, we made the decision (even without an official decision from Celfocus) to tell our people to start working from home as a precaution. At that moment, we didn't know it would be the last time we'd enter the office in that year. The following week it became official, a communication from Celfocus came out indicating that everyone should start working from home.

I know this will sound cliché... but I think the phrase "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger" fits perfectly here; the pandemic times have thoroughly tested our ability to adapt.

Definitely Generative AI.

No, I don't have a poor memory, and I am just mentioning the most recent thing that comes to mind. I genuinely consider GenAI to be the technological innovation that has surprised me the most, and it's still taking its first steps!

In my opinion, this new technology will clearly transform our way of working.

We should keep ourselves updated and prepare for yet another adaptation.

That's easy, by also constantly evolving myself.

I think in our field of work, we can't afford to relax and go through a period without updating ourselves. A short span of time is enough to turn an innovative solution into an obsolete one.

I confess that often it's not easy, especially because if we spend time following all the fashions and new trends, sometimes we might just be doing that, spending time. So, the big challenge is to study and understand which horses clearly make sense to bet on.

I would like to have a story as interesting as the invention of penicillin or Velcro, but the truth is, I don't. All I can say is that I completely agree with that sentence, and mention that several of our enablers and initiatives arise as solutions to this type of mistake, and after we realize that small mistakes can trigger major setbacks.

Good question, apparently it will be Python, why?

Because it was the clearest answer that ChatGPT gave to the question: What is the most versatile programming language capable of delivering no matter what?

And despite wanting to say Java at all costs, this time I have to agree with ChatGPT.

Similar to Celfocus, Python is a very versatile programming language, capable of being applied from web development to data science and machine learning.

I think the software of the future will be completely different from what we're used to today.

Programming languages will no longer be relevant, in fact, the various languages will converge on the same features, principles, and models. With the simplification of software development, the focus will increasingly be on components like performance, resilience, and security of solutions.

Will software engineers still be needed?

Of course! In a different format, with a totally different skill set, perhaps more experts in prompt engineering than in developing in language x or y, but the human touch and experience will always be necessary.