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The last few years have been tumultuous ones for tech workers, particularly mobile and web developers. With the rapid advent and adoption of AI, the disruptive Covid pandemic, a global economy behaving like a white-knuckle roller coaster and a seemingly endless spate of tech layoffs, it’s been a wild ride for everyone.
Yet with every downturn, the sun does eventually break through the clouds, with new opportunities, disruptive technologies and creative ideas helping power a return to economic growth and stability — and, hopefully, more tech jobs. With that in mind, I reached out to a few expert developers and techies to get their take on the skills and emerging tech trends that web and app developers should be paying attention to in 2025.
Tech Skills to Learn in 2025
1. Coding with AI Tools, AI Integration and Automation
AI platforms, frameworks, tools and applications have had a profound impact on software development in recent years. Everyone I spoke with stressed that AI is here to stay and that developers should aggressively incorporate AI technologies into their daily workflows.
“…those that can adapt and leverage AI to accelerate the design-to-code pipeline will come out on top.”
— Douglas Chen, CTO of Codeium
“Whether it be web apps or native apps, AI can understand your codebase and generate full components, pages and apps within seconds,” said Douglas Chen, CTO and co-founder of Codeium, an AI-powered code extension. “Being able to harness this power will be what separates the P99 engineer and the P50 engineer. There is a growing trend in running a lean operation. Multimillion-dollar companies can be built with just one or two people, including writing the code, mapping out the product and handling business operations. Productivity enhancements are making it possible to accomplish a lot more.”
Chen stresses that working smarter will “be the name of the game in 2025,” and “those that can adapt and leverage AI to accelerate the design-to-code pipeline will come out on top.”
2. Rapid Prototyping for UX/UI Design
Speaking of the design-to-code pipeline, a fresh crop of AI-enhanced tools are making it easier than ever for web and app developers to quickly design and test UI concepts. Abhi Aiyer, co-founder and CTO of Mastra, a Typescript agent framework, encourages developers to learn “rapid prototyping with tools like Lovable, v0 [by Vercel] and bolt.new,” which he says can be used to quickly spool up prototypes to test ideas and reduce the time needed to go from mockups to final applications.
Chen builds on his earlier comments about improving the “design-to-code pipeline” by suggesting that user experience (UX) design will become an increasingly important skill for developers to embrace.
“I believe UX design and ‘taste’ will be one of the top differentiable skills for devs,” argues Chen. “It will be easy to write or generate code that is visually appealing given the AI’s training data, but great software will be separated by innovation in the UX layer.”
Chen added that Codeium’s new Previews feature embraces that idea and has seen an expanding use case for it.
3. Cross-Platform Development and WebAssembly (Wasm)
Another valued skillset devs should be aware of is the increasing need for cross-platform development, particularly between web and mobile apps.
“The lines between mobile and web continue to blur,” said Duane Forrester, who launched Bing Webmaster Tools and is the founder and CEO of Unbound Answers. “WebAssembly is making web apps as performant as native ones, and cross-platform frameworks — like Flutter, React Native, etc. — are only getting stronger. Efficiency wins. I recently watched a dev rebuild an entire product in React to make it easier in the future to launch iOS apps, etc., because he didn’t want to replicate work in the future. THAT is how you thrive today and tomorrow.”
“A good understanding of UI and backend technologies is a must to survive.”
– Abhi Aiyer, CTO of Mastra
Like Forrester, Aiyers also stresses the need for developers to look at other skills and beef up their understanding of platforms and technologies in disparate areas. “Since AI is generating a lot of code, [having a] good understanding of UI and backend technologies is a must to survive,” he said.
4. Security-First Development
While AI is helping all developers prototype, code and ship apps and projects more quickly, the demand for reliable, secure code that meets an ever-increasing number of security regulations and compliance needs is just as important as ever.
“With the surge in cyber threats and evolving regulations — Hello, GDPR 2.0 — and whatever else governments cook up, security can’t be an afterthought,” said Forrester. “Developers who bake in security from the start — think zero-trust architecture, AI-driven threat detection and secure-by-design principles — will be invaluable.”
5. Understanding Customers
A final skill that all tech workers should embrace learning is to think more about what the needs and concerns of their users are, and try to increase engagement between devs and users. “Devs will have to understand their own users more and more,” stresses Chen. “The friction to write code will decrease, meaning engineers can spend more time focusing on shipping products.”
Dev Tech Trends for 2025
6. The Arrival of App Builders
With AI making the generation of code more efficient, many companies are using it to create low-code/no-code approaches to build applications. The New Stack’s Lorraine Lawson writes about this new trend in an article that describes how Salesforce used an AI tech stack to build an app in four days. Other app-building examples include Toddle, an open source web app builder, and Streamlit, which helps data scientists interact with data easily without calling in dedicated devs.
7. AI-Powered Everything, Everywhere
This is arguably one of the most visible trends of 2025, but it’s important not to understate just how rapidly AI technologies are being embedded into nearly every aspect of our digital lives.
“If you’re not leveraging AI in your stack, you’re falling behind.”
– Duane Forrester, CEO of Unbound Answers
“AI isn’t just automating code,” said Forrester. “It’s reshaping search, personalization, security and development workflows. If you’re not leveraging AI in your stack, you’re falling behind.”
8. Web-based AI Frameworks
For web developers, the emergence of web-based AI frameworks is another trend that bears paying attention to, including platforms like TensorFlow.js, Keras and PyTorch. There’s also a move toward creating frameworks for building AI agents, like the AGNTCY effort being led by Cisco, LangChain, Galileo and others.
9. The Decline of App Stores?
One possible trend that could see some traction is the gradual decline of the importance of app stores, partly driven by increasingly capable web apps. There is some evidence that might be happening, with TechCrunch reporting that app store downloads decreased slightly — by 2.3% in 2024 — although revenue from app stores actually increased.
“Web3 technologies, progressive web apps (PWAs), and alternative distribution models [are] gaining traction,” suggests Forrester. “Apple and Google’s walled gardens are starting to crack. The next wave of apps may not need the app store at all.”
10. The Impact of AI on Search
While not directly related to web and app development, the increasing impact of AI in how internet searches happen is a trend that everyone should be paying attention to. My colleague Richard MacManus has written an excellent article on the impact of SEO on search engines, and the impact of AI on the way we all find content on the web will only be increasing in the coming years.
“If there’s one thing to take away from AI and search in 2025, it’s this: SEO isn’t about ranking anymore — it’s about relevance and authority,” said Forrester. “Search is shifting from ‘10 blue links’ to AI-driven answer engines. Google, OpenAI, Perplexity and others are moving toward intent-based, conversational search, where AI curates and summarizes the best sources instead of just showing a list of results.”
Enhancing Skills and Learning Trends: Putting Both to Use
While this list of tech trends and desired skills is far from complete, I hope it helps web and app developers take advantage of how the industry is changing and how they can advance their careers in the midst of ubiquitous tech industry turmoil these days. I asked several of the experts I reached out to send along some final advice for devs who might be either looking to enhance their skills or look for a new role, and all had some useful tips to share.
Aiyer suggests that as an increasing amount of more technical work is being created and aided by AI, so he encourages devs to improve their soft skills and increase their skill and competency with AI tools.
“The demand for adaptable, AI-savvy professionals is skyrocketing.”
— Forrester
Forrester echoes that point, suggesting that learning how to take advantage of AI is a must. “Bottom line? Don’t wait for the market to bounce back — position yourself ahead of the wave. The demand for adaptable, AI-savvy professionals is skyrocketing. If you can pivot and evolve, you won’t just survive this disruption — you’ll thrive in it.”
Finally, Chen from Codeium encourages developers to also embrace using AI for tasks and projects outside of development.
“The skillset of what companies are looking for [is] changing and will continue to adapt to meet the AI productivity landscape,” said Chen. “You can do way more in 2025 than you could in 2024, simply by leaning on AI tools. This not only includes writing software, but also learning new skills via ChatGPT. People will have the power to start businesses or side projects they never dreamed they could’ve done before. Building a portfolio of outcomes that showcase your flexibility, work ethic and tenacity will be paramount as employers look for more impact-oriented candidates as opposed to candidates with specific skills.”
The post Top 10 App Developer Skills and Trends to Learn in 2025 appeared first on The New Stack.
We surveyed expert developers about the skills and emerging tech trends that web and app developers should be paying attention to in 2025.