Ask HN: A New Decade. Any Predictions? (2010) • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: A New Decade. Any Predictions? (2010)

#341

Post by mnutt » Fri, Jan 03, 2020, 3:59 PM UTC

danso wrote: post #317

TulliusCicero wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> - As Moore's Law marches on, dynamic languages that are even slower than Ruby are likely to catch on. They may be to Ruby what Ruby is to Java, trading even more programmer time for CPU time. Interesting how plausible this one is, yet turned out to be terribly wrong: the newer hyped languages that got some uptake were largely compiled ones like Swift, Rust, Kotlin, and Dart.

I was thinking that exact same thing. Rails was hitting its peak in 2010, and the idea that programmer time is more valuable than CPU time suggested dynamic languages were the future. I mean, that’s not entirely wrong — Besides JS, Python is arguably the most dominant language across all domains. Python is also faster than Ruby, though, and 3.x added static-like features to the language. It doesn’t seem like there’s…

I don’t think one can say that python is faster than ruby: https://benchmarksgame-team.pages.debian.net/benchmarksgame/...

I think the perception is there because of python’s scientific and ML libraries that have a lot of c bindings, perhaps?

Both are drastically faster than they were a decade ago, so 2010-era python or ruby are still the high-water mark.

Re: Ask HN: A New Decade. Any Predictions? (2010)

#342

Post by druddha » Fri, Jan 03, 2020, 4:05 PM UTC

mminer237 wrote: post #73

TulliusCicero wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> - As Moore's Law marches on, dynamic languages that are even slower than Ruby are likely to catch on. They may be to Ruby what Ruby is to Java, trading even more programmer time for CPU time. Interesting how plausible this one is, yet turned out to be terribly wrong: the newer hyped languages that got some uptake were largely compiled ones like Swift, Rust, Kotlin, and Dart.

I mean, JavaScript and Python have definitely become much more popular for many more things than they were in 2010. I doubt Swift replaced much besides other compiled languages, and Kotlin just compiles to Java anyway. Dart's VM idea was dropped so its small usage is largely compiling to JS still. I would say that the overall idea of performance being traded for programmer time is definitely happening despite the eme…

JS and Python are not to Ruby what Ruby is to Java, though.

Re: Ask HN: A New Decade. Any Predictions? (2010)

#343

Post by alamaslah » Fri, Jan 03, 2020, 4:11 PM UTC

slothtrop wrote: post #333

calcifer wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"No Way To Prevent This", Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%27No_Way_To_Prevent_This,%27_...

They've moved the goalpost from this to "the deaths are statistically insignificant".

Where did they get that idea from? [1]

Amusingly... it was likely their opposition. This is why you should hold yourself and those you align with to high standards. It only stengthens your position...even if you are completely wrong (although only a little bit)

[1] https://ourworldindata.org/terrorism

Re: Ask HN: A New Decade. Any Predictions? (2010)

#344

Post by pushcx » Fri, Jan 03, 2020, 4:25 PM UTC

surround wrote: post #203

chubot wrote: post #107

HN will split. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1025709 Didn't happen! Kudos to @dang and the HN staff for keeping the site going for a decade !!

Well, there is lobste.rs

Yep, but my guess is that Lobsters is probably around 1/100th the size of HN on any dimension you care to measure (some recent stats: https://lobste.rs/s/8yumgi/killed_by_google#c_ugdtol). We explicitly have a narrower scope and are not interested in trying to dethrone/replace/etc HN. But ultimately, "split" is too vague a prediction to be judged as accurate or inaccurate.

(Context: I am the admin of Lobsters.)

Re: Ask HN: A New Decade. Any Predictions? (2010)

#345

Post by Apofis » Fri, Jan 03, 2020, 4:32 PM UTC

- You still won't be able to talk to your fridge

Re: Ask HN: A New Decade. Any Predictions? (2010)

#346

Post by Apofis » Fri, Jan 03, 2020, 4:33 PM UTC

haunter wrote: post #5

IsaacL nailed it the best https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1027093 And surprisingly the WoW one is the most off :D

- You still won't be able to talk to your fridge

This is wrong too.

Re: Ask HN: A New Decade. Any Predictions? (2010)

#347

Post by netcan » Fri, Jan 03, 2020, 4:36 PM UTC

Quick listing some top predictions & my take on right/wrong

Iran will Change : I’ll call it NO

RFID-Everything : Basically NO… not in consumer-land, at least

Cheap Flat Panel Displays : YES

Ubiquitous & Wireless/Mobile: YES

Ebooks Take Over & Pirates Win: NO. Surprisingly, the opposite happened. monolithic legal markets did really well.

Electric Cars Event Horizon: ALMOST

Driverless Cars Go Live: NO.

Still No Fusion Power: CORRECT

MSFT Declines: NO

Chinese Bubble Burst: NO

Lady Gaga is New Madonna: Yes. Good call!

Google will Change for Worst: CORRECT on the moral point. INCORRECT on the financial one

Pension Bomb Problems: No

Habitable Planet Found: PROBABLY, but we don’t know which one it was.

Data Mining Political Watershed: YES.

Re: Ask HN: A New Decade. Any Predictions? (2010)

#348

Post by y-c-o-m-b » Fri, Jan 03, 2020, 4:50 PM UTC

buboard wrote: post #338

aazaa wrote: post #185

The most striking thing about the thread is how little of current importance was even mentioned: - Bitcoin would become the decade's best investment by far - the President of the US would conduct foreign policy through Twitter - electric scooters would become a billion dollar business (Bird, Lime, etc.) - the sharing economy would threaten the taxi and hotel industries (AirBNB and Uber) - escalation of school shootin…

people tend to make optimistic predictions. A lot of predictions were correct, and many of them were right on subject, but predicted the positive instead of the negative turn of things. Interesting views regardless, but i cant help to notice that tech progress was nothing like 2000->2010.

I feel like enormous cultural and technological hardware advancements were made between 1990-2010 that affected people on a national or global level. The advances were revolutionary. I have a hard time associating the last decade the same way. To me, the 2010-2020 decade has been stagnant.

My overall sentiments, more or less:

1990->2000 we went from very few people owning personal computers to wider adoption of PCs and broadband was gaining traction (I personally had @Home cable internet in 1998).

2000->2010 mass adoption of cell phones, starting with the flip phones to pocket PCs to the first iPhone in 2007. Social media (MySpace, The Facebook). Peer to peer networking, piracy (The Pirate Bay). Laptops. The first tablets.

2010->2020 mild improvements on the stuff from the previous two decades

EDIT: I'll give the last decade Uber (although I've only used it once) and AirBnb since that was a huge shift as well, but my overall feeling remains the same.

Re: Ask HN: A New Decade. Any Predictions? (2010)

#349

Post by mbesto » Fri, Jan 03, 2020, 4:52 PM UTC

aazaa wrote: post #185

The most striking thing about the thread is how little of current importance was even mentioned: - Bitcoin would become the decade's best investment by far - the President of the US would conduct foreign policy through Twitter - electric scooters would become a billion dollar business (Bird, Lime, etc.) - the sharing economy would threaten the taxi and hotel industries (AirBNB and Uber) - escalation of school shootin…

> - electric scooters would become a billion dollar business (Bird, Lime, etc.)

Valued at a billion dollars by venture capitalists. I'd be genuinely surprised if they are anywhere near a $B in revenue

Re: Ask HN: A New Decade. Any Predictions? (2010)

#350

Post by ancarda » Fri, Jan 03, 2020, 4:54 PM UTC

calcifer wrote: post #276

SlowRobotAhead wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> escalation of school shootings Bubble thought. School shootings are down from previous highs and are actually very rare [0]. COVERAGE and willingness to use any incident to promote a very specific narrative are up. [0] https://news.northeastern.edu/2018/02/26/schools-are-still-o...

"No Way To Prevent This", Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%27No_Way_To_Prevent_This,%27_...

On that thought, is there any way to prevent shootings without making guns harder or impossible for citizens to own?

Seems many will not disarm in the US, so should we be exploring other options rather than repeatedly saying the US should be more like other countries?