Live data from Hacker News

Ten predictions (2004)

sites.google.com

91–100 of 324 posts

Re: Ten predictions (2004)

#91

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.…

"6. A new internet community-hangout will appear. One that you and I will frequent. This is such a vague prediction does not even worth mentioning." This is one he nailed - Facebook.

Yeah it may seem obvious to us now that there is one major social network where people use their real names and the total user base approaching 1 billion, but that was not at all obvious in 2004.

Re: Ten predictions (2004)

#92
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When reading the article, I had the feeling that prediction #6 was actually FaceBook.

Facebook already existed when this was written. HN was just around the corner and fits a lot better, imo. I figured "you and I" referred to developers and entrepeneurs, not the general public.

I don't think Facebook was big at the time, was it?

Re: Ten predictions (2004)

#93

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".

Brakes are a complete waste of energy...

Re: Ten predictions (2004)

#94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With all respect, I have hard time seeing Apple laptops outside the US. Indeed. And where I am (also outside the US) I have a hard time seeing non-Apple laptops. Anecdotal evidence isn't really that useful when we're talking about global trends. Not counting some fanboys who acquired the taste trough some snob blogs. Making statements like this cause you come across as overly emotionally invested in your platform, an…

> Emotional investemented No. I happen to use anything. I am not against Apple, I am against the Apple fanboyism. And any type of fanboyism. > Anecdotal evidence http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_system... "For example, most desktop and laptop computers use Microsoft Windows"

No. I happen to use anything. I am not against Apple, I am against the Apple fanboyism. And any type of fanboyism.

'Fanboy' is a pejorative term used on the internet to try and infer irrationality in others. It's like hipster. It doesn't make you magically qualified to judge others opinions or motivations just by using it.

"For example, most desktop and laptop computers use Microsoft Windows"

That is not anecdotal, though it's also not the fact being discussed. Note that I'm not trying to argue that Apple sells more laptops combined than the other main manufacturers, I don't believe they do.

Re: Ten predictions (2004)

#95

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, not sure about cars, but bicycles without brakes are getting pretty hip...

Re: Ten predictions (2004)

#96

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.…

> 9. Apple's laptop sales will exceed those of HP/Compaq, IBM, Dell and Gateway combined by 2010. No way, thanks God.

If you count laptop+tablet sales, it may be close.

Re: Ten predictions (2004)

#97
post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

People at universities and who work at the sort of jobs you can do from coffeeshops are probably significantly more affluent that average.

Re: Ten predictions (2004)

#98
post #81

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…

> 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 real…

I really don't see threads being used explicitly more today then they were 10 years ago. The number of programmers who are proficient in dealing with locks, semaphores, etc...doesn't seem to have grown much (perhaps not outpacing the overall rate). If anything, we have a lot more code these days that is not explicitly multi-threaded but is implicitly concurrent in some other way that may or may not use threads under the covers (async, job managers).

Re: Ten predictions (2004)

#99
On the Lisp thing, looking around the programming world in 2004, you didn't see proliferation of functional concepts like you do today. In those days, "functional" meant Lisp, at least popularly. I think the big lesson of Lisp has been disseminated, though, and that is that it is more productive to write code-that-writes-code.

But I also think we learned a broader lesson that it's better to not pigeon-hole people down into a single paradigm. So what if Company A uses only the functional bits of your language and Company B uses only the object oriented bits, thus making their code "incompatible". Their code would be incompatible even if they could 100% agree on programming paradigms, naming conventions, API patterns. Because programming is so much NOT the syntax of the language, as long as it is not specifically restrictive.

Re: Ten predictions (2004)

#100

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…

> A tautology if I ever heard one.

It's not a tautology, it's the asymptotic equipartition property.

Post reply on HN