Ask HN: What's the next big thing in computing / programming? • Hacker News Board

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

#41

Post by typon » Mon, Dec 20, 2021, 3:41 PM UTC

softwaredoug wrote: post #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…

When it comes to machine learning, yes it is important to know statistical methods, but at this point deep learning shouldn't be pejoratively referred to as the HottestNewArchitecture. If you want to solve previously unsolved problems, deep learning is necessary; and if you want more specific advice, learn how transformers work. This class of models is qualitatively different in the kinds of problems they unlock as solvable.

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

#42

Post by cinntaile » Mon, Dec 20, 2021, 3:41 PM UTC

edhelas wrote: 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.

Hardware has gotten more power hungry over the years not less. As long as people are more expensive than energy/hardware, I don't see this changing anytime soon. Maybe we'll get better at utilizing our high performance hardware by offloading the computations more and more to the cloud but overall energy usage will likely keep going up. Growing economies and cheap, abundant energy go hand in hand.

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

#43

Post by f0e4c2f7 » Mon, Dec 20, 2021, 3:42 PM UTC

VR and 3D development.

It's much bigger than games.

There are some frameworks that are just now hitting their stride that make it 10x easier to build virtual worlds. Unreal Engine 5 in particular has been interesting to me. Even today we are seeing people who work full time in VR now. (mostly lower wage employees in low cost of living countries). But I've also met people who are self employed in VR making avatars for people in VR chat or that sort of thing.

It's harder now with covid but if you have a chance to try VR somewhere definitely do, it helps if you can experience it first hand.

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

#44

Post by alex_duf » Mon, Dec 20, 2021, 3:42 PM UTC

clavicat wrote: post #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.

there's actually one angle that I believe has changed on that topic: security.

Security is to me the number 1 reason to reduce bloat in any application. By limiting the number of external dependencies, and maybe even the number of features, you end up with a more secure product.

It something that didn't matter as much a decade ago, but is now very relevant.

Then there's all the other reasons, like responsiveness, download size, developer experience etc, but they haven't been the priority of most businesses

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

#45

Post by vzaliva » Mon, Dec 20, 2021, 3:44 PM UTC

I believe that formal verification is the next big thing. The problem with software reliability and security becoming the most critical one and this is the way to tackle it. There is sufficient research in academia which could be used as a foundation to build tools for the industry.

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

#46

Post by wepple » Mon, Dec 20, 2021, 3:44 PM UTC

goalieca wrote: post #26

Security is going to be the next big thing. I’m hoping for a small revolution in 3rd party libs and a locking down on the supply chain as a start.

I agree. Security/privacy aren’t going to become less of a problem, and knowing what is actually running on our systems is a remarkably unsolved problem.

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

#47

Post by alex_duf » Mon, Dec 20, 2021, 3:45 PM UTC

kennu wrote: post #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.

I have a bit of a knee-jerk reaction every time I hear web3, and immediately picture somewhat interesting tech with not that many practical applications.

I'm possibly lacking vision, so I'm wondering if anyone could share interesting examples of that (old) new wave of technology?

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

#48

Post by throwaway24124 » Mon, Dec 20, 2021, 3:45 PM UTC

Not personally excited for this, but I think the next big thing will be the internet and computers becoming "hyper-transactional" through crypto. I believe this is what companies like Facebook are really pushing toward when they talk about Web 3.0 and the metaverse. It will still, for the most part, be the same internet accessed through phones and computers, but videogame-style micro-transactions powered by crypto will become part of most websites to access content. Since every site having micro-transactions would probably piss off a lot of the general population, I think there will also be an explosion of new ways to earn very small amounts of crypto online, by doing mechanical turk style tasks, playing a new game, creating a bit of content for someone, etc. Average consumers will earn these small amounts of crypto, then immediately spend them on the content they want.

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

#49

Post by tester756 » Mon, Dec 20, 2021, 3:47 PM UTC

vzaliva wrote: post #45

I believe that formal verification is the next big thing. The problem with software reliability and security becoming the most critical one and this is the way to tackle it. There is sufficient research in academia which could be used as a foundation to build tools for the industry.

but is formal verification required/needed to solve latest security issues?

I mean those related to: CPUs, NPM, External Libraries, parsers written in unsafe languages

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

#50

Post by thom » Mon, Dec 20, 2021, 3:47 PM UTC

Better, simpler data flow frameworks. Represent all your business's logic declaratively, or at least succinctly. Connect up all the inputs, batch or streaming. The platform automagically maintains your data, always consistent and up-to-date. Apps are just views on top of this that trigger more events later. Find a bug in some of your logic? Fix it and the entire dataset refreshes, with policies on how you want to deal with external integrations that trigger off the back of that. This is what a lot of enterprise data infrastructure already looks like, but cobbled together and slow and buggy. I don't think adding no/low code on top of that really moves the needle. Make it painless and joyful from beginning to end.

If you're thinking of wearables, I personally don't think there's anything interesting there until someone can work out a decent high-bandwidth way of communicating with your device. Gimme something like subvocalisation that doesn't require me to wear something stupid or talk out loud.