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Ask HN: 90s programmers, what did you expect the future of tech to look like?
41–50 of 469 posts
Re: Ask HN: 90s programmers, what did you expect the future of tech to look like?
#42We wouldn’t make applications. Rather we’d deliver components which could interoperate via a binary contract. Components would be “snapped” together by non-programmers to make an application. I suppose that pieces of this became true with the proliferation and adoption of open source. Rather than a binary protocol, HTTP came out on top. SharePoint brought us WebParts which tried to put the power in the hands of busin…
This is really interesting and reflected in some things like dreamweaver and Oracle Apex.
I can actually see some of this happening in the crypto space. Things like MetaMask and now chainlink combining into some form of low code smart contract app tool. As you say though even in this scenario devs don’t go away.
Re: Ask HN: 90s programmers, what did you expect the future of tech to look like?
#43I did not expect the internet would become so ephemeral.
Re: Ask HN: 90s programmers, what did you expect the future of tech to look like?
#44Less of a dystopian wealth-inequality driving nightmare for one thing.
Re: Ask HN: 90s programmers, what did you expect the future of tech to look like?
#45VRML should have taken over the internet by now.
Re: Ask HN: 90s programmers, what did you expect the future of tech to look like?
#46"It's so drag-and-drop and easy you won't even need programmers anymore" about various form builder apps. People still think this today.
Re: Ask HN: 90s programmers, what did you expect the future of tech to look like?
#47Oh god, there were so many boneheaded 90s predictions about computers. 1) We just expected single core performance to double forever every 2 years or so. Many of us were ignorant of single-core performance scaling and the memory wall issues. I want to be clear: Computer Architects were warning people about this in the early 90s but many ignored their inconvenient truth. 2) 2D GUIs would evolve into 3D GUIs - maybe VR…
> 3) Low/no code drag-and-drop style programming tools would take away many dev jobs
I started programming as a kid in the early 90s, and went to college in the late 90s/early 00s. It might sound crazy in hindsight, but between these tools and outsourcing, everyone I talked to thought being a programmer was going to be a dead end minimum wage type job, and I was strongly advised by many to pick a different major.
Re: Ask HN: 90s programmers, what did you expect the future of tech to look like?
#48Oh god, there were so many boneheaded 90s predictions about computers. 1) We just expected single core performance to double forever every 2 years or so. Many of us were ignorant of single-core performance scaling and the memory wall issues. I want to be clear: Computer Architects were warning people about this in the early 90s but many ignored their inconvenient truth. 2) 2D GUIs would evolve into 3D GUIs - maybe VR…
> Low/no code drag-and-drop style programming tools would take away many dev jobs
When I was a kid my dad refused to teach me to program, he thought it would be a useless skill to learn because he believed in the future there would be no more programmers, as everyone would be able to program anything they wanted through drag and drop interfaces.
Re: Ask HN: 90s programmers, what did you expect the future of tech to look like?
#49I expected Linux to pose a serious threat to Windows and Macs eventually. The rise of OS X and the later polishing up of Windows into something acceptable took me by surprise at the turn of the century.
One of the biggest reasons for the miss was I had expected cross-platform app development to become much more mature much more quickly than it actually did. The long persistence of apps that only ran on Windows was something that I didn't expect.
I also didn't expect the fast decline of desktop computers leading to the vendor lock in effect that led to the best laptops tending to either run Windows or Mac OS, further eroding the relevance of Linux not just because Linux didn't ship on those devices but also because it was a second class citizen for drivers.
I also did not expect to be making this post from an Android phone decades later.
Re: Ask HN: 90s programmers, what did you expect the future of tech to look like?
#50Lot's of good stuff here, but I'll admit I can't remember a single "prediction" of my own. I just thought everything would keep going in the same direction, faster CPUs, faster network, cheaper disk and RAM, more e-commerce and more information exchange were the expectations I can recall.
While we're reminiscing, the thing I remember the most from the late 90's is that it seemed no one knew what they were doing (or perhaps it was just me). The Internet opened up such a frontier in computing, for effectively hobbyists, as I guess we'll never see again. Perhaps that's why I don't recall thinking about what computing would look like in the 21st century--there was too much to be done right in front of my face!
EDIT: There's a mention or two of thin clients. I think only Sun thought that would work :).
Oh ok, I can think of one that actually worked out: Linux on commodity hardware in data centers. It became clear by 98 or so that the combination of Apache (httpd) on a bunch of cheap Linux boxen behind an expensive LB would tear down the Sun/IBM scale up model fairly easily due to both cost reduction and an improved resiliency. Of course there were MySQL bottlenecks to work through, but then memcache landed and pushed that off a cycle. Then there were the 64-bit AMD chips and a large bump in RAM density that pushed it back another. And then I guess true distributed computing landed.