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

> > "We’ve known for a long time that software will eat the world — the comings and going’s of everyday life, once they are expressed as code, become infinitely easier to patch and improve using only a keyboard and display."

Yeah, I kinda see this as the exact opposite. The fact that symbolic code, keyboards, and displays are all tied together is no accident. It's a limitation that prevents computation / simulation from being used in situations that aren't oriented around text-input.

There's so many situations like this! We're a bit blind to it, because we're used to pulling out our phone, and it's hard to predict what we'd all use computers for if we escaped the trappings of mouse-keyboard-text-code. It's just like how cheap paper / the push for literacy helped make paper receipts at coffee shops a thing, but nobody could have predicted cheap-paper-receipts in the 1600's when books were so insanely laborious to create (forget even read!).

And that can scale to complex systems.

I often compare VR to 3D during the 80s. It's still early. I don't think it'll take over though. It's just uncomfortable sitting in a headset for too long, like there's a human instinct to see if someone else is in the same room as you or something.

To add to the list:

- 'Authorship Environments: In search of the “personal” in personal computing' Strangeloop talk (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5U6MkU5fLJw)

If we are to make computing personal, as any medium of thought needs to be, we'll need a new framework, a new way to think about computing, We'll need to shed the ingrained assumptions. We'll need a new language: no more "users" and "programmers." I've never heard a good definition of either but these terms are too loaded and too corrosive today.*

I am not claiming this is the next big thing, but if we are to move to the sort of goals described in a number of the projects in the list, something like this will have to happen.

* Best one I know is of programming: blindly manipulating symbols in hope of an outcome.

IMO, the following will take 5 to 10 years

IMO, VR will skyrocket when:

We have a portable headset that is:

Affordable

4k resolution per eye

Has decent mixed reality capabilities (e.g. see the Varjo XR 3 as an example on YouTube)

Has a good omnidirectional threadml that is affordable (i.e. walking, running and moving should be possible as it is normally). I find the current threadmills that I see (e.g. KatVR) a good step in the direction but still too problematic.

Killer apps are (from concrete to abstract):

Having multiple monitors in your room. Now you can travel with 10 monitors in your backpack.

90% real simulations (try Golf+, Eleven Table Tennis and Thrill of the Fight — those games are already there).

Mark Zuckerberg his vision of the Metaverse, which I interpret as: being able to mix and match hanging out and playing games together in VR (note: more companies than only Meta could work on this). Reasoning: gaming together is simply a specialized form of hanging out.

Software-dizing hardware interfaces. The more stuff we put in VR/AR (especially force feedback mechanisms), the better we can mimic the feel of hardware interfaces. In certain cases it will feel real enough and then you can import the entire hardware device into software/VR/AR and suddenly thr production of such a device is now much cheaper. For example: a realistic electronic keyboard in VR. I don’t know how to solve for the force feedback in this case but I do know that there is other hardware for which this must be easier.

Source: I bought an Oculus Quest 2 a month ago to play around with VR while constantly asking what it is lacking and what will make it awesome.