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Ask HN: What's the next big thing in computing / programming?

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Re: Ask HN: What's the next big thing in computing / programming?

#11
post #8
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My colleague and boss in 2014, 2016, 2017...

Well that's on them, nobody in their right mind would say that people are gonna like having big bulky computer thingy on their head. That doesn't mean we won't be getting laser retinal projection in the next 10-20 years.

That doesn't mean it will also not happen :) Hoping for a technology doesn't make it appear one day.

Re: Ask HN: What's the next big thing in computing / programming?

#12
Spatial computing.

If all of reality is able to be piped into Unity (structure of static environment, motion of sensors, dynamic object poses) you can build Reality Apps the same as you can build video games.

You can give people spidey-senses or "the force". Everything will have a UX.

Re: Ask HN: What's the next big thing in computing / programming?

#13
Real personal computing, that benefits end-users on their terms. In the Future of Coding community, we often use the analogy of "home cooking". As in, we have restaurants & professional chefs but not enough home cooks in computing. Tools & processes are super different when you're cooking for yourself / family vs for a restaurant!

There are a few trends that are tiptoeing on the edges here:

- tools for thought / creative tools (Muse, Nodes.io, Mem, etc)

- end-user programming (people trying everything from visual PL's to simpler / more constrained programming interfaces)

- local-first software (https://www.inkandswitch.com/local-first/)

- web3 - I'm biased here and a bit skeptical of the fervor here, but matches some of the ethos / philosophy

- more customizable / hackable personal computing hardware (https://frame.work/)

- spatial + tactile computing so the body can participate in the thinking process (instead of only the 'head'): https://dynamicland.org/

- explorables, games / interactive viz to quickly transfer rich context: https://explorabl.es/

- video games, often indie ones, are exploring deep ideas: see Zachtronics games, Jonathan Blow's games, some of Annapurna Interactive funded games, etc. So many!

- open data: better end-user data tools so anyone can understand the systems around them

Re: Ask HN: What's the next big thing in computing / programming?

#14
2022? Probably focus on the big things of 2021. Not much will change within a year.

2032? Hard to say, but it is quite possible that software and the web will actually look quite similar to what we have now. I found the concepts in this presentation quite intriguing [1]. Some stuff like airplanes haven't changed THAT much in the last 50 years, because they are good enough for their purpose.

[1]: https://idlewords.com/talks/web_design_first_100_years.htm

Re: Ask HN: What's the next big thing in computing / programming?

#15
Web3 will go through its current hype cycle peak (with lots of people both hyping and hating it), and in a few years we will see what actually comes of it. I predict we will find some interesting unforeseeable use cases for decentralized computing/currency, but it'll take some time.

Re: Ask HN: What's the next big thing in computing / programming?

#17
post #3

Reducing the usage and having an actual degrowth of electronic devices consumption, and especially power consumption. If we are not choosing to go there, physics will teach us the hard way (it already begun). Basically any region/country that is able to do the same, with less hardware, less energy will have a big advantage over the other regions/countries in the upcoming years.

Things don't seem to be going there. We had dumb phones lasting around a week in the 00s, then switched to semi-cordless smartphones that need to be charged sometimes more than once a day. Same for RAM and CPU usage, when looking at browsers. We, developers, seem to expand our resource usage to consume whatever is available, irregardless of some theoretical minimum we could be aiming for.

Re: Ask HN: What's the next big thing in computing / programming?

#19
Hopefully, realizing how unnecessarily shitty and bloated nearly all existing software is and rediscovering an appreciation for simplicity, reliability, and performance. There’s so much low-hanging fruit to be picked yet we let it rot on the vine.

Projects like Zig I think are the first signs that we are getting fed up with what we have.

Re: Ask HN: What's the next big thing in computing / programming?

#20
Unpopular opinion, but chase old things, not new ones.

The big investment in your career will be ideas that stand the test of time. Relational Databases, data structures, programming paradigms, math, etc. Even in machine learning, just knowing core statistics and regression is more important than HottestNewArchitecture :TM:.

Learn the ideas underneath these ideas, and you'll really grow and be able to better evaluate / learn new ideas.

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