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Ten predictions (2004)

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Re: Ten predictions (2004)

#171

Post by ctdonath »

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.…

1. XML databases will surpass relational databases in popularity by 2011. Yup, close enough insofar as the point was made but some of the names were changed and improvements applied.

2. Someone will make a lot of money by hosting open-source web applications. Ya know, he might be onto something there. In retrospect, it relies on fulfillment of #7.

3. Multi-threaded programming will fall out of favor by 2012. It's just too obvious a technique to not use. Alternatives may be cleaner, but not as clear. "Get it done" trumps "make all the pieces play in perfect harmony".

4. Java's "market share" on the JVM will drop below 50% by 2010. That assumed robust use of JVM. iOS & Android exploded onto the market, changing the landscape he was addressing.

5. Lisp will be in the top 10 most popular programming languages by 2010. Nope. But I assume he never expected Objective-C would be.

6. A new internet community-hangout will appear. One that you and I will frequent. Facebook. EVERYBODY is on Facebook. Wasn't so important that "you and I" use it, but that our mothers would.

7. The mobile/wireless/handheld market is still at least 5 years out. Odd that he was more predicting something not happening; we'll say he was right insofar as what constitutes "happened" is squishy and took a few years to get going, but wrong insofar as when it did happen it did so to a far greater degree than he expected. Half of the then-absurd snide "promises" he listed as others making have pretty much come true: HDTV pixel counts on a pocket device, LTE data rate 10x faster than T1, etc.

8. Someday I will voluntarily pay Google for one of their services. He couldn't grok what Google would be able to offer for free.

9. Apple's laptop sales will exceed those of HP/Compaq, IBM, Dell and Gateway combined by 2010. Had to invent the smartphone and tablet markets to do so, but insofar as an iPhone 5 is on par with notebooks back then, we'll count this as a big win.

10. In five years' time, most programmers will still be average. More a tautology than anything. What's "average" is pretty friggin' capable given a cheap modern toolset. For $99 and a Mac darned near any competent idiot can whip up a practical app and have it available to the world in a few days, no need for mad skillz.

The thing about predictions is the difficulty of articulating how discoveries along the way will affect manifestation of the prediction. One may be right in the spirit of the prediction, but not the letter thereof.

Re: Ten predictions (2004)

#172

Post by justin_vanw »

Lisp will never be popular. Everyone likes to kiss the ass of Lisp, and talk about how transformative and powerful it is, then they go and write a bunch of Python or Ruby or Lua or Perl or anything other than Lisp, because infix is just much much more readable. When was the last time you went to a math class and the professor wasn't using infix notation? Even the Common Lisp Hyperspec has to resort to infix notation to explain things. Look at all the infix notation: http://www.lispworks.com/documentation/HyperSpec/Body/f_car_...

Otherwise, this is pretty spot on. I would say that XML databases should be replaced with JSON or schemaless databases (there was no json back then) and then this prediction is spot on as well.

Re: Ten predictions (2004)

#173

Post by ajross »

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.…

Actually 4 is almost entirely backwards. He's saying that Java the language will be less popular than other JVM languages. That's not true at all. Obviously what actually happened is that the Sun/Oracle JVM dropped below 50% market share of "VMs that run Java", losing badly to Google's Dalvik. Java-the-language remains dominant on both, however.

Re: Ten predictions (2004)

#174

Post by lkrubner »

jimbokun wrote: post #166
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.…

"5. Lisp will be in the top 10 most popular programming languages by 2010. This failed hard." Tiobe has "Lisp" ranked 13, not clear what they included as "Lisp". (Specific Lisps like Scheme, Common Lisp, and Clojure rank much lower, so must be some kind of aggregate.) http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/index.... Interestingly, the "Very Long Term History" table has Lisp going from rank 20 in 2008 t…

You are perhaps aware that the Death Of Lisp happened in between the first date and the current date? The Golden Age Of Lisp was during the 1970s and 1980s when the USA Defense Department put substantial funds into AI research, and the favored language for AI research was Lisp. And, to a degree, the Lisp community became dependent on that money. If you look up some of the famous companies that put together Lisp-oriented machines circa 1980, there was the clear assumption that money from the Defense Department would continue forever. However, Communism collapsed in 1989 and from the Reagan build-up of the 1980s to the demobilization under Clinton in the 1990s, the USA spending on the military shifted from almost 9% of GDP to roughly 4% of GDP. There were cutbacks in research spending. And this lead to the Great Death Of Lisp.

However, good ideas are resilient even if the face of death. People such as Paul Graham kept the flame alive. People like Rich Hickey brought it into the modern age. There is no question that Lisp is on the comeback trail.

There is also, of course, the broader victory of Lisp: the impact it has had on all other languages. Paul Graham wrote about that here:

http://www.paulgraham.com/diff.html

Re: Ten predictions (2004)

#175

Post by Semaphor »

bruceboughton wrote: post #119
stinky613 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you were in college in 2004 it was pretty unavoidable

Facebook didn't launch 'til February 2004. Initially it was only available at US Ivy League colleges and, then, in 2005 at some international universities, but it was not "unavoidable" in 2004. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Facebook

> then, in 2005 at some international universities

Every, if you bothered to get your university internal mail unlocked.

I had to send them a mail with the website of my German university and how our e-mail addresses looked, about 6 weeks later I was able tor register.

Re: Ten predictions (2004)

#176

Post by randomdata »

johnward wrote: post #149
baak wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

JSON Databases have passed relational in popularity? I don't know that I believe that. Anyone know if there's a NoSQL/SQL market share comparison out there?

They are becoming popular but there is no way they surpass relational databases in use.

That brings up an interesting question of where the line of what is a database gets drawn. Does a JSON interface to a CRUD application that uses a relational database behind the scenes count as a JSON database? A part of me thinks it should. CouchDB positioned itself with a JSON API that allowed you to skip the CRUD middleware, so from the API consuming point of view there is essentially no difference.

Re: Ten predictions (2004)

#177

Post by habosa »

This is a pretty incredible list of predictions. I'm not just impressed at how 'correct' some are, but also that these predictions turned out to be so important to the tech industry.

It's interesting how everyone has a different take on #2. When I read it, I thought of Heroku and I think that's pretty close. With the git integration many people do `git push github && git push heroku` which is pretty cool.

As fir #10, that's not good news for all of the "Rockstars Only" job postings.

Re: Ten predictions (2004)

#178

Post by [deleted] »

juan_juarez wrote: post #160
ghshephard wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

I'm surprised that he missed MySpace which was active & growing at the time.

[deleted]

Re: Ten predictions (2004)

#179

Post by doomlaser »

ImprovedSilence wrote: post #167
friendly_chap wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

2. I think github is the most notable example. 3. Gotta reread that. 6. Oh come on, facebook, youporn, whatever. As I said, too vague.

>> 6. Oh come on, facebook, youporn, whatever. As I said, too vague. Yeah, so he didn't call out a specific "type" of socializing, or draw up the wireframe for facebook here. But he just recognized there is a huge trend of people wanting to share their lives and communicate in near real time. I think he nailed it. Facebook and twiiter are just that. Even look at his move example. These days, you watch you movie or TV…

Facebook already existed with over a million users when he wrote this.

Re: Ten predictions (2004)

#180

Post by [deleted] »

ImprovedSilence wrote: post #167
friendly_chap wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

2. I think github is the most notable example. 3. Gotta reread that. 6. Oh come on, facebook, youporn, whatever. As I said, too vague.

>> 6. Oh come on, facebook, youporn, whatever. As I said, too vague. Yeah, so he didn't call out a specific "type" of socializing, or draw up the wireframe for facebook here. But he just recognized there is a huge trend of people wanting to share their lives and communicate in near real time. I think he nailed it. Facebook and twiiter are just that. Even look at his move example. These days, you watch you movie or TV…

[deleted]
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