Video produced by Influence Media.
Behind the technology we use on a day-to-day basis are lines of code, written by programmers and software developers, or “Devs” across the world.
This often unnoticed and invisible technology runs much of the modern world.
One Hull-based software development company has been quietly working away on a variety of projects since the early days of C4DI.
It was a pleasure to speak to one of our earliest members and co-founder of Fractal Software, Lewis Taylor, to find out more about this important profession, how they operate, and what impact if any AI is having on the industry.
A plug-in programmer
Fractal are not like a lot of developers. By setting up their own company, and working on contracts for various companies, they’ve got a wide range of experience and provide unique benefits to companies looking for this in demand skill.
Summing up their profession, Lewis says simply “we are problem solvers, within the domain of technology. We're applying our tools to the problems at hand, to build what the customer wants and needs.”
He recognises it’s sometimes difficult to explain what they do, partly because they can do so much. The layman is probably aware of the need for website developers but Lewis is keen to point out that they do a bit more than that.
“We're trying to do the hardcore stuff. So proper data science, proper engineering, backends, scalable, fast, real-time systems." In other words, the technology that runs things. And they’ve done that for several different industries.
Their small company – there’s only 3 of them – has worked with the likes of Smith and Nephew, University of Hull, and Sonoco-Trident in the area, on medical devices, clinical trials, education and more. There’s also been IoT projects in the construction industry, data warehousing and web apps. To Lewis it’s all a problem-solving exercise that could, in theory, be applied to any industry.
Their ‘plug-in’ approach has several benefits to an organisation, who in some cases have no existing resource at all but regardless, Fractal can offer a certain specialism or shoulder the load of an in-house team. They “plug in straightaway and start building, progressing towards some kind of solution, or not, if that’s not the right thing to do. We get a lot of companies who say 'can we do this or that' where we might suggest an alternative approach.”
“We start from first principles and build what they really need and guide them along that journey.”
Given how important these skills are, it’s no wonder they are in demand. Even in the wake of evolving technology, there is still a shortage of software developers, and companies need them as much as ever.
The state of Software Development
Software might be changing fast, but according to Lewis “the fundamentals aren’t.” A lot of modern programming is simply about working with data.
“90% of data science is formatting data, getting it into a state where you can do the interesting things. It's taking all this data and turning it into information, which you can get a return on. It’s about getting things in the right format, to run processes, statistics, and find patterns.”
“Unless we get some mad revolution in quantum computing, it's unlikely that things are going to change really dramatically in terms of the fundamentals.”
In fact, even the much-hyped AI, is not necessarily all new. In many cases, it’s established technology that’s reached a more mainstream audience.
“The neural networks that underpin all the new AI stuff have been around since the 60s or thereabouts. It's just we haven't had the hardware to run a lot of it. Now we've made these big steps forward. So it's less of a radical change and more of an evolution.”
And what does all this mean for developers like Fractal?
The impact of AI
His response is suitably measured and should ease some of the concerns some people have about AI taking their job.
“Yes, there are [bots] that can write software for you. Someone can take a well-crafted statement in English and turn it into some code. But that's not going to solve the real problem. At the end of the day, you still need to understand what people want and then find the right way to do it.”
Not only that but as is the case for other forms of Generative AI, “everything it knows is already written by someone. It's not yet at the point where it's writing something truly innovative. It's not like in the [70s] when Kernighan and Ritchie were inventing the C programming language. It's taking all the code that's in GitHub and mangling it and spitting out the other side, right?”
Of course, that’s not to say it couldn’t get there eventually but for the time being at least, that’s not happening. Given that’s the case, many businesses may want to know, what the real benefits of the technology are.
There may be some subtle improvements to productivity from Generative AI but Lewis says, “from a business point of view it’s probably not that important.” What is more valuable than the flashy new consumer tech is unsurprisingly the slightly more boring, cumbersome use cases of AI.
“If you can produce graphs formatted in a way that someone will actually understand it, rather than just reams of data, that's probably going to give you a greater return on investment.”
So, that begs the question, are they using it in their work?
For output, “no,” he says. However, they’re certainly staying on the pulse, which includes toying with the likes of Stable Diffusion “which you can see the source code for and build your own models.”
Ultimately, the work Fractal do is secure and they’re looking towards the future with a healthy dose of optimism and curiosity by the sounds of it.
The Hull tech hub
And that’s really how it all started for Lewis and the team. He recounts their origins straight out of university. They joined C4DI before the current main building was completed and were soon involved in the move to the new building.
“It's 2015. We're just finishing university. The C4DI Beta was in full swing. I met John Connolly and saw the amount of opportunity that was in the city, when it comes to software and technology.”
They saw their chance and took it and have worked with a wide range of companies since then on software and a little bit of hardware too. As for the role that C4DI has played in their growth, Lewis says this has been massive.
“I think 90% of our work has come some way, somehow through C4DI. It's a really nice place to work as well. It is the hub for technology in the city.” And he notes how it’s expanding too, with the new site in Northallerton.
“There's always someone to chat to. It's not like people are just siloed in their own little box.”
Now they’re looking towards the future. “We're always looking for new project work or new clients, interesting things that we actually want to build. We don't just want to build web apps, we want to build things that hopefully improve people's lives, like the stuff we're doing for Smith and Nephew and the clinical trials, things which have made a measurable difference in some hospitals, which is cool.”
In fact, Lewis can speak directly to the impact their work has had.
“When I was 10, I was in a coma and I got a load of bed sores. I've still got the scars. We helped Smith and Nephew with a tool that basically [helps with alleviating bedsores], making sure turn protocols happen correctly.”
“I know from their white papers that it has made an impact on something that actually affected me which is kind of a cool thing. So, it's less about what the project is and more about the impact of it.”
There appears to be no end to the possibilities of what their work could do, so be sure to find out more about Fractalhere.