Over 10 Years in IT: What Has Changed and How?

In the beginning, there was Windows Phone. But not only that: there were also Objective-C for iOS and Java for Android. Those were different times, which the new generations of developers — perhaps fortunately for them — have never experienced.

When Mabiloft was born, or rather, when three guys decided to start building apps as freelancers in the attic of one of their parents’ house, the world of software development was very different from what it is today.

It was 2014, and building software meant dealing with cumbersome technical aspects:

• Working on mobile often meant using native languages
• There were fewer web frameworks, with simpler stacks (HTML, JavaScript, jQuery, PHP).
• Ready-made libraries and shared standards were not yet part of the game.
• Work was often duplicated across different platforms, resulting in double the effort in design, development, and testing.

More than ten years have passed, and these problems are now a thing of the past. What has changed in the meantime? And what is the challenge today, in 2026?

What Has Changed in Software Development Since 2014

Mabiloft was established as an S.N.C. in 2018 and became an S.R.L. in 2020. The company has evolved, but so has the work itself. Building software has become less and less a form of labor-intensive craftsmanship and more and more an act of well-equipped engineering.

What made the difference were more advanced tools:

• Solid frameworks
• Open-source solutions
• Cross-platform tools
• Cloud distribution

The first step forward was React Native, which made it possible to use the same codebase for both Android and iOS, instead of having to build two separate apps.

Later on, for us, the big leap came with Flutter: not just a shared base, but also greater control over the user experience and higher-quality code.

But it is not only mobile development that has matured. On the web side as well, we have moved from “building websites” to creating full-fledged digital products, complete in every aspect: from onboarding to dashboards, with careful attention to performance and accessibility.

In practice, if in the past developing an app, whether mobile or web, was like having to raise a chicken just to make an omelette, today we can simply take the eggs from the fridge. In fact, thanks to artificial intelligence, the omelette practically arrives on the table by itself.

AI is the latest major upgrade for us developers. It has accelerated every aspect of our work:

• It has made building prototypes easier
• It assists us in writing code
• It helps us find and fix bugs more quickly
• It saves us from wasting time on code documentation

But it is a double-edged sword. Because while everything is faster and more automated, it also highlights everything that remains a human responsibility: understanding the product context, for example.

What Are Today’s Challenges: Building in a Human Way

The real evolution we have witnessed, however, is not technological. Over the years, we have seen that the most radical change has been in product culture.

Perhaps in the past, for a new feature to be developed, it was enough for it to work; does the app not crash? Does the button do what is expected? Then everything is fine. But today, this is no longer the case. Every feature is weighed against business objectives, must be sustainable in the long term, produce measurable output, and contribute something to the product.

Artificial intelligence has reduced the cost of development, but not the cost of wrong decisions. If writing code has become almost trivial, knowing what to build, and how not to do it blindly, certainly has not.

There are many aspects to consider when designing a new feature: does it improve the user experience? Is it aligned with the product’s priorities? Today, there is less need to deal with technical problems, and more often the need to take the right direction.

And it is not just a problem at the level of individual features. Because as technical barriers have been lowered, more and more people and companies now have access to software development. So the question becomes: how can a product stand out among thousands of others that are created every day?

In practice, strategy is the challenge for the new generation of developers. It is therefore a strongly human aspect of development, requiring the ability to know users, understand their real needs, and translate them into conscious product decisions.

Mabiloft has also gone through every stage of this journey. We were, and still are, developers, but today we are also product designers, capable of turning an idea into a well-thought-out product, with a clearly defined business plan that generates a positive impact on the end user. While we wait to see what the future holds.

And you? Are you developing a new digital product? If you would like to ask us for a consultation, feel free to write to us with no obligation.