2022 in Review: The Year in Tech
A look back at the major technology trends that defined 2022. From the explosion of generative AI with DALL-E 2 and ChatGPT to the continued rise of Rust and the consolidation of the cloud, we review the year's most impactful developments.
As 2022 comes to a close, it's clear that this was a year of foundational shifts in the technology landscape. While some trends were a continuation of previous years, others exploded onto the scene, setting the stage for what will undoubtedly be a transformative decade ahead. Here's a look back at the most significant trends that defined the year in tech.
The Generative AI Explosion
Without a doubt, the biggest story of 2022 was the incredible and rapid progress in generative AI. While the field has been advancing for years, 2022 was the year it captured the public's imagination.
DALL-E 2 and Stable Diffusion: Early in the year, OpenAI's DALL-E 2 demonstrated a stunning ability to create realistic and artistic images from simple text prompts. This was quickly followed by the open-source release of Stable Diffusion, which put powerful image generation capabilities into the hands of everyone.
ChatGPT: In late 2022, OpenAI released ChatGPT, a conversational AI model that took the world by storm. Its ability to answer complex questions, write code, draft emails, and engage in nuanced conversation demonstrated a massive leap forward in natural language understanding and generation. It was a watershed moment that made the power of large language models (LLMs) accessible to millions.
The Continued Rise of Rust
The Rust programming language continued its march towards the mainstream. For the seventh year in a row, it was named the "most loved" programming language in Stack Overflow's annual survey. Its promise of performance, reliability, and memory safety without a garbage collector has made it an increasingly popular choice for systems programming, web backends, and even in the Linux kernel itself.
The Maturation of Infrastructure as Code (IaC)
Infrastructure as Code has become the undisputed standard for managing cloud infrastructure. Tools like Terraform and AWS CDK have matured significantly, making it easier than ever to define, version, and manage infrastructure in a repeatable and automated way. The debate is no longer if you should use IaC, but which tool is the best fit for your team.
.NET 6 and C# 10 Solidify Their Position
The release of .NET 6 in late 2021 set the stage for a strong year for the .NET ecosystem. With its unified platform, long-term support, and significant performance improvements, .NET 6 has become a compelling choice for building cross-platform applications. Features in C# 10 like Minimal APIs, global usings, and record structs have further streamlined the development experience, making it faster and more enjoyable to build high-performance web APIs.
The Consolidation of the Cloud
The major cloud providers—AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud—continued to consolidate their dominance. The conversation has shifted from "should we move to the cloud?" to "how can we best leverage the cloud?" Services around serverless computing, managed databases, and machine learning have become increasingly sophisticated, allowing teams to build powerful applications with less operational overhead.
Looking Ahead
2022 was a year of incredible innovation, particularly in the AI space. The developments of this year have laid the groundwork for what is to come. As we head into 2023, we can expect to see the continued integration of AI into every aspect of software development, a greater focus on platform engineering to manage cloud complexity, and an ongoing push for more performant and secure programming languages.