Ask HN: A New Decade. Any Predictions? (2010) • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: A New Decade. Any Predictions? (2010)

#111

Post by wbillingsley » Fri, Jan 03, 2020, 2:21 AM UTC

kick wrote: post #75

darzu wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> - The next big thing will be something totally unknown and unpredictable now, as user-generated content and social networking were in 1999. However, when it does appear, various 'experts' on it will spring from nowhere to lecture us all about it. It will still be really cool, though. I think this basically describes AI.

AI wasn't totally unknown: basically every coastal university during the 1970s and 1980s were filled with people working on AI, and it didn't die off, it just became embarrassing to work on.

Neither was user generated content (that's what the original web was) or social networking (irc, email, bulletin boards, etc). Making it useful and usable beyond an academic and techie niche was new.

Re: Ask HN: A New Decade. Any Predictions? (2010)

#112

Post by jnwatson » Fri, Jan 03, 2020, 2:21 AM UTC

philplckthun wrote: post #101

haunter wrote: post #5

IsaacL nailed it the best https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1027093 And surprisingly the WoW one is the most off :D

> Now that Google is advertising Chrome on billboards here in the UK, all that can be safely predicted about the browser market is that it'll be extremely competitive. It's rather interesting to see how the web went from IE dominating, to Chrome doing essentially the same. Looks like predicting such a growth was farfetched. Funny to see that the prediction of IE sticking around was mostly right. I long for the day th…

Internet Explorer 6 could have been the dominant browser essentially forever if Microsoft hadn’t zeroed its investment into it. Its incentives weren’t aligned with a robust web platform. Google’s incentives are definitely aligned for Chrome to dominate.

Re: Ask HN: A New Decade. Any Predictions? (2010)

#113

Post by bordercases » Fri, Jan 03, 2020, 2:21 AM UTC

zozbot234 wrote: post #62

bordercases wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone really needs to crack simple generic type systems with native levels of performance to get all of this to work. Performance comes from optimizing the usage of state against hardware, modularity comes from code satisfying the properties of composition which is best left stateless (and high levels of modularity must come from abstraction and conventional practice, incurring further debts on the programmer and m…

> Someone really needs to crack simple generic type systems with native levels of performance to get all of this to work. We know how this works, at least in broad theoretical terms. Zero-cost abstractions are quite feasible within a self-contained module/component, but their scope is ultimately limited by ease of building and deployment. Nevertheless the performance impact of having to support high levels of abstrac…

I'm thinking supercompilation might be another part of the equation as long as we're talking extended composition of modules and types whose behavior is totally closed. Having a pipeline that can supercompile when systems are pushed in production even if some compilation time is traded for performance at development (maybe "local" supercompilation for subsystems relevant to a development team?) would be an interesting thing. But I don't know.

Re: Ask HN: A New Decade. Any Predictions? (2010)

#114

Post by jnwatson » Fri, Jan 03, 2020, 2:22 AM UTC

hyperpape wrote: post #27

haunter wrote: post #5

IsaacL nailed it the best https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1027093 And surprisingly the WoW one is the most off :D

The dynamic languages slower than ruby prediction didn't hold up either. The past ten years have just seen nibbling around the edges for dynamic languages, without any compelling ideas about how to make them fundamentally more expressive.

Python is eating the world. In many measures, Python is slower than Ruby.

Re: Ask HN: A New Decade. Any Predictions? (2010)

#115

Post by suyash » Fri, Jan 03, 2020, 2:22 AM UTC

Wow reading all those predictions sound so foolish! Most were way off, goes to say why long term predictions is so hard.

Re: Ask HN: A New Decade. Any Predictions? (2010)

#116

Post by CoolGuySteve » Fri, Jan 03, 2020, 2:24 AM UTC

mminer237 wrote: post #73

TulliusCicero wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> - As Moore's Law marches on, dynamic languages that are even slower than Ruby are likely to catch on. They may be to Ruby what Ruby is to Java, trading even more programmer time for CPU time. Interesting how plausible this one is, yet turned out to be terribly wrong: the newer hyped languages that got some uptake were largely compiled ones like Swift, Rust, Kotlin, and Dart.

I mean, JavaScript and Python have definitely become much more popular for many more things than they were in 2010. I doubt Swift replaced much besides other compiled languages, and Kotlin just compiles to Java anyway. Dart's VM idea was dropped so its small usage is largely compiling to JS still. I would say that the overall idea of performance being traded for programmer time is definitely happening despite the eme…

In terms of language design, it seems like swift and julia are the most forward looking.

I personally don't think swift will ever escape the Mac ecosystem, just like Objective-C never did, but something with the same DNA will.

In the same way that Objective-C and Ruby both implement the philosophy of Smalltalk, I think that philosophy has yet to be fleshed out in a simple syntax that is natively jit'ed/compiled.

The same goes for julia as an answer to R/pandas.

Re: Ask HN: A New Decade. Any Predictions? (2010)

#117

Post by dgzl » Fri, Jan 03, 2020, 2:26 AM UTC

I think the country is going to become very, very divided.

Re: Ask HN: A New Decade. Any Predictions? (2010)

#118

Post by impendia » Fri, Jan 03, 2020, 2:29 AM UTC

> Ubiquitous mobile/wireless internet integrated into even very trivial consumer goods, with close to 100% coverage across the civilized world. A significant fraction of ordinary consumer goods simply won't work in "dark" zones.

I'm glad that this remains mostly false (as well as "all high street bookstores go bust"). Sure, you can get a wi-fi enabled toaster or coffeepot, but the basic versions are still available for sale.

I chose to live without wi-fi at home, and with no smartphone, for the past four months -- just to see how my life went without the distraction. Now the experiment has run its course, and I plan to order wifi again. But basically life went on as normal, and I feel I could do another four months if I chose.

I wonder for how long into the future such a choice will remain realistic.

Re: Ask HN: A New Decade. Any Predictions? (2010)

#119

Post by windowshopping » Fri, Jan 03, 2020, 2:29 AM UTC

c3534l wrote: post #82

haunter wrote: post #5

IsaacL nailed it the best https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1027093 And surprisingly the WoW one is the most off :D

If 6 out of 17 predictions correct with the only unambiguously correct predictions being trivial or vague is "nailing it," then I probably won't be taking stock advice from you any time soon. On the other hand, predicting the future is kind of hard. IsaacL made some really conservative predictions, sticking to things that seemed obvious. In fact, most of the wrong ones would be perfectly reasonable predictions for th…

How is it not easier to start something now than ten years ago? I would say he was correct on that one.

Re: Ask HN: A New Decade. Any Predictions? (2010)

#120

Post by heavyset_go » Fri, Jan 03, 2020, 2:32 AM UTC

mminer237 wrote: post #73

TulliusCicero wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> - As Moore's Law marches on, dynamic languages that are even slower than Ruby are likely to catch on. They may be to Ruby what Ruby is to Java, trading even more programmer time for CPU time. Interesting how plausible this one is, yet turned out to be terribly wrong: the newer hyped languages that got some uptake were largely compiled ones like Swift, Rust, Kotlin, and Dart.

I mean, JavaScript and Python have definitely become much more popular for many more things than they were in 2010. I doubt Swift replaced much besides other compiled languages, and Kotlin just compiles to Java anyway. Dart's VM idea was dropped so its small usage is largely compiling to JS still. I would say that the overall idea of performance being traded for programmer time is definitely happening despite the eme…

> Dart's VM idea was dropped so its small usage is largely compiling to JS still.

Are you sure about this? I was under the impression that today's Flutter development is highly dependent on the niceties the Dart VM provides, and newer Dart releases improved upon them.