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Ten predictions (2004)

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Re: Ten predictions (2004)

#81

Post by Nursie »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #36
friendly_chap wrote: post #29

1. XML databases will surpass relational databases in popularity by 2011. We got NoSQL (esp. JSON based ones) instead of XML. Close enough though. 2. Someone will make a lot of money by hosting open-source web applications. Github is cool but with all the cheapskate web devs (no offense, I am one of them) I don't think it is _that_ profitable. 3. Multi-threaded programming will fall out of favor by 2012. Not really.…

> We got NoSQL (esp. JSON based ones) instead of XML. Thank god we dodged that bullet. I'm just glad people see XML for what it really is (useful, but not that useful). > Not really. We are already in the multicore age, and it will only get moreticore. The problem is multi-threaded has never really took off, even with all the cores we have today. There is still no silverbullet to harnessing parallelism. > Apple's lap…

> The problem is multi-threaded has never really took off, even with all the cores we have today. There is still no silverbullet to harnessing parallelism.

MMmmm..... yeah it has. I'll agree on the silver bullet, but I don't think they need one.

Threads are all over the place, and easier than ever to use. They do require intelligence to use well, and people to think about things like locking strategies, but they really are not all that hard. It amazes me that people seem to be so scared of them for some reason.

Perhaps it's the problem domain I work in (back-end server systems) but I come across them all the time. When dealing with lots of distinct tasks for lots of distinct clients you can make good use of threads without needing to do the kind of hard-core mathematical analysis that you would apply to splitting single tasks across parallel systems.

(And no, I'm not suggesting that a one-thread-per-client model is a silver bullet, there are more efficient async ways of doing things)

Re: Ten predictions (2004)

#82

Post by dspillett »

friendly_chap wrote: post #29

1. XML databases will surpass relational databases in popularity by 2011. We got NoSQL (esp. JSON based ones) instead of XML. Close enough though. 2. Someone will make a lot of money by hosting open-source web applications. Github is cool but with all the cheapskate web devs (no offense, I am one of them) I don't think it is _that_ profitable. 3. Multi-threaded programming will fall out of favor by 2012. Not really.…

3. Multi-threaded programming will fall out of favor by 2012. Not really. We are already in the multicore age, and it will only get moreticore.

A lot of things server-side are moving back towards multiple processes rather than threading, driven by "cloud" based scaling: if you code is designed to handle being spread over many nodes then why complicate things by having two concurrency models on the go at once (threads at host level, multiple processes spread over the hosts)?

8. Someday I will voluntarily pay Google for one of their services. You don't say? They are one of the biggest players out there, even if they are not primarily known for payware but still.

While most individuals just use the free service level, you can pay for the use and support of Google Docs and some groups do. Same with Google Drive: while many won't need more than the free 5Gb it costs per month for more than that (if you are using it to store music and video 5Gb isn't hard to fill).

10. In five years' time, most programmers will still be average. This makes no sense, but anyway, we are getting better. Slowly though, version control, more languages, testing is infiltrating even some dumber dev companies too.

It makes perfect sense in a pointless way: most of everyone are average at everything. As people get better/worse the average shuffles around too. If he is talking about following best (or at least good) practises I can tell you thre are a lot of average people out there despite the tools avaliable to make it easier to do things right.

Re: Ten predictions (2004)

#83

Post by [deleted] »

qompiler wrote: post #77

10. In five years' time, most programmers will still be average. Most programmers are average, that's the definition of average. It's like saying in five years most people will still be average.

[deleted]

Re: Ten predictions (2004)

#84

Post by unalone »

rmc wrote: post #60
Wilya wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could repeat the same prediction every year, and you'd probably be right everytime.

Nah, mainstream social networks are new.

Yeah, if you're living a decade ago. By 2005, MySpace was such a big deal that if you were a student without one, you'd feel like you were missing out on something important socially, and by 2008, Facebook had pretty much everybody, including grandparents, as a user. Nowadays the center is shifting again, and most of the people I know have started using Tumblr as their social locus, but it probably won't overtake FB. I'd predict something new coming up in the next year or two that ends up overtaking Facebook in market share, but its approach will have to be highly insightful and unusual, nothing like what I've seen yet online. (Path comes the closest, but Path's reliance on smartphones kills their audience; I still have friends without smartphones and I'd never use a platform that shuts out friends for their consumer decisions.)

Re: Ten predictions (2004)

#85

Post by dagw »

friendly_chap wrote: post #44
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We got NoSQL (esp. JSON based ones) instead of XML. Thank god we dodged that bullet. I'm just glad people see XML for what it really is (useful, but not that useful). > Not really. We are already in the multicore age, and it will only get moreticore. The problem is multi-threaded has never really took off, even with all the cores we have today. There is still no silverbullet to harnessing parallelism. > Apple's lap…

> useful, but not that useful + 1 > Apple's profits With all respect, I have hard time seeing Apple laptops outside the US. Not counting some fanboys who acquired the taste trough some snob blogs.

Half the programmers and web developers/designers I know here in Sweden have Apple laptops, (including several Windows devs). Peeking into random coffee shops and walking past university campuses also seem to indicate that they're quite popular overall. Of course all those people could simply be fanboys who acquired the taste trough some snob blogs, but I'm not sure how to tell.

Re: Ten predictions (2004)

#86

Post by yen223 »

qompiler wrote: post #77

10. In five years' time, most programmers will still be average. Most programmers are average, that's the definition of average. It's like saying in five years most people will still be average.

"Of course most programmers will still be average, by definition. The problem is that the average level of quality and productivity probably won't have changed all that much." -- from the article.

Re: Ten predictions (2004)

#87

Post by vincentkriek »

qompiler wrote: post #77

10. In five years' time, most programmers will still be average. Most programmers are average, that's the definition of average. It's like saying in five years most people will still be average.

Well, not really. If we look at programmers by skill level and number that skill level from 0-9. If you have 100 "5ers", than the average is 5. And yes, than most programmers are average.

If you have 50 "1s" and 50 "9s", the average will still be 5, but no one is average.

Then again, I don't think that is what he meant.

Re: Ten predictions (2004)

#88

Post by experiment0 »

friendly_chap wrote: post #49
eloisant wrote: post #47

Considering that Lisp failed to get to the top 10 between 1958 and 2004, it was pretty dump to predict it would suddenly rise to the top.

Predicting that a language without a type system is the future is pretty dumb in itself. I give y'all an other one: "cars without brakes are the future".

Well Lisp is dynamically typed and Javascript, Ruby and Python seem to be doing pretty well.

Re: Ten predictions (2004)

#89

Post by johndavidback »

dools wrote: post #43
friendly_chap wrote: post #29

1. XML databases will surpass relational databases in popularity by 2011. We got NoSQL (esp. JSON based ones) instead of XML. Close enough though. 2. Someone will make a lot of money by hosting open-source web applications. Github is cool but with all the cheapskate web devs (no offense, I am one of them) I don't think it is _that_ profitable. 3. Multi-threaded programming will fall out of favor by 2012. Not really.…

2. Someone will make a lot of money by hosting open-source web applications. Github is cool but with all the cheapskate web devs (no offense, I am one of them) I don't think it is _that_ profitable. I think he means more like wordpress.com, WPEngine and those ilk. Those are currently the most lucrative, but there are other examples of businesses monetising open source by hosting it.

I think more specifically he means things like Heroku or Modulus.

Re: Ten predictions (2004)

#90

Post by seanmcdirmid »

bazzargh wrote: post #72
[deleted] wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[deleted]

Source? According to Scott Chacon himself, it was profitable even back in 2010. http://techcrunch.com/2010/07/24/github-one-million/ Or this: http://www.linuxuser.co.uk/news/github-gets-100-million-inve... Announcing the investment on the GitHub blog, CEO Tom Preston-Warner admitted it wasn’t that they necessarily needed it: “Our company has been profitable for years, is growing fast, and doesn’t need money. So why b…

Ah, sorry. I thought they were still in start-up mode. It does seem a bit early for them to be turning a profit; I hope they are investing enough.
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