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Ask HN: 90s programmers, what did you expect the future of tech to look like?

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Re: Ask HN: 90s programmers, what did you expect the future of tech to look like?

#431

Post by mcv »

forbiddenvoid wrote: post #190
mcv wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, Google Glass was launched big some years ago, and everybody mocked it.

I think fewer people would have mocked it if it were in anyway accessible to ordinary folks. They set the wrong price point, which made it an easy target for ridicule because only 'rich' people with sufficient disposable income even had them.

It makes sense that the first version of something like that is going to be expensive, though. And compared to some of the high-end smartphones of today, it wasn't even that outrageous, was it? It was aimed at early adopters, which makes sense. If successful, prices would drop, cheap knock-offs would appear, and more people could afford it.

Re: Ask HN: 90s programmers, what did you expect the future of tech to look like?

#432

Post by lnwlebjel »

astrange wrote: post #133
diego_moita wrote: post #65

I really believed computers would make people smarter, better informed, able to make more rational decisions. They'd understand and trust science more, make better political decisions. We even had a slogan for it: "computers are bicycles for the mind": https://www.brainpickings.org/2011/12/21/steve-jobs-bicycle-... I was so naive...

Reading too much science is actually common with anti-vaxxers and other such people, they love quoting renegade doctors and having absolute faith in arxiv papers they misread or quoted out of context. Most published research is false even if it's peer-reviewed, and it may be better to leave it to people who read it full time and understand it's an ongoing conversation.

Is it "Reading too much science" or is it just that human characteristic of confirming ones own biases (ie anchoring bias, confirmation bias or whatever they're called)? Personally, I think its a lack of Baloney detection skills: https://www.openculture.com/2016/04/carl-sagan-presents-his-... Don't just leave it to the experts!

Also, I'm not sure you can say that "Most published research is false". There are many degrees between true and false. In the physical sciences, with which I'm familiar, the papers are demonstrably 'mostly true'. For example, as a bi-product of an experiment last week we observed an Ekman spiral (first published in 1905 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ekman_spiral).

Re: Ask HN: 90s programmers, what did you expect the future of tech to look like?

#433

Post by 0xbadcafebee »

rom16384 wrote: post #328

I expected the common programming language would be an improved Visual Basic or other Visual Programming Language (drag component to screen, write event handler), and that desktop applications would continue to be the dominant form of computing. DHTML looked like a toy, and I didn't take it seriously, and although I knew the internet was a revolution I only saw it as a means to distribute information, not as way to d…

VT100 -> Net terminal, Web Page -> Web App. It'll move to "native apps" as mobile and desktop OSes merge, and then it'll go full-remote back to the VT100s. The circle of life...

Re: Ask HN: 90s programmers, what did you expect the future of tech to look like?

#434

Post by 0xbadcafebee »

DougWebb wrote: post #57
jvanderbot wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

data.for_each( |x| : x-> map ( blah blah blah )))))))

my @result = map { blah blah blah with $_ } @data; I became a Perl developer at the tail end of the 90's. I learned a lot of functional development and Lisp before I had any idea what they were.

And who'da thunk that all modern language ecosystems would completely ignore the few good parts of CPAN?

Re: Ask HN: 90s programmers, what did you expect the future of tech to look like?

#435

Post by suvo »

gameswithgo wrote: post #200
trashface wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an inverse anecdote, when I graduated with my CS degree in '97, I didn't expect to be unemployed 23 years later, as I am now. It's partly health related, and partly a result of my own bad decision making. But my impression after a ~20 year career is that continuous tech employment is quite fragile. Maybe different for those starting out now, and certainly different for those at FAANG.

Graduated 2001, everyone I know who wants to still be in CS still is. It definitely takes some willful effort to keep up though, as things change so rapidly. I remember when I first started working is when everything started becoming a web application "so you didn't have to install anything". I remember thinking that seemed like a crazy tradeoff to accept. But then everyone did it. I still think it was crazy.

The only reason why I took up CS in my majors was 'because' it changes fast. Cuz then this was the only job role where nobody could ever condescend to me that 'ye're just a kid!' Unlike a classical engineering branch, say in Mechanical or Electrical where the last major development happened in 1845. Because everybody is a kid their whole lives in the CS world.

Re: Ask HN: 90s programmers, what did you expect the future of tech to look like?

#436

Post by photojosh »

suvo wrote: post #435
gameswithgo wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Graduated 2001, everyone I know who wants to still be in CS still is. It definitely takes some willful effort to keep up though, as things change so rapidly. I remember when I first started working is when everything started becoming a web application "so you didn't have to install anything". I remember thinking that seemed like a crazy tradeoff to accept. But then everyone did it. I still think it was crazy.

The only reason why I took up CS in my majors was 'because' it changes fast. Cuz then this was the only job role where nobody could ever condescend to me that 'ye're just a kid!' Unlike a classical engineering branch, say in Mechanical or Electrical where the last major development happened in 1845. Because everybody is a kid their whole lives in the CS world.

> say in Mechanical or Electrical where the last major development happened in 1845

Uh, what? Apparently computer science gets the credit for, eg, the transistor? Nah.

Re: Ask HN: 90s programmers, what did you expect the future of tech to look like?

#438

Post by waste_monk »

I'd be interested to know what people thought of Semantic Web tech (which barely squeezes in, around 1999).

When I went to university (2013-16ish) there were still a couple of professors clinging to the idea that everyone would see the light and semantic web would be broadly implemented, but aside from that everyone else I've ever discussed it with has considered it a dead or vapourware technology. I am curious as to whether it was seen as viable or realistic back in the day, or just a pipe dream.

Re: Ask HN: 90s programmers, what did you expect the future of tech to look like?

#439

Post by cloudedcordial »

andyana wrote: post #123
mcv wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I expected RISC to overtake CISC much sooner than it did. I expected IPv6 to be adopted quickly. I expected 6GB to be more storage than I could ever fill. I expected Windows to be quickly dismissed and Unix to become the standard. I expected to have a screen built into my glasses by now.

Regarding screens in glasses: where is the hold up? I've been thinking of prototyping something for the past few weeks (only thinking, hence my question).

Well, someone has tried "screen in glasses".

I've tried the glasses from North, which has been bought by Google a few years ago. The projection of the screen on the lens looks cool, but the glasses had no traction in the market and the company tried to charge me C$1100+ for a pair of prescription smart glasses.

Re: Ask HN: 90s programmers, what did you expect the future of tech to look like?

#440

Post by kstenerud »

waste_monk wrote: post #438

I'd be interested to know what people thought of Semantic Web tech (which barely squeezes in, around 1999). When I went to university (2013-16ish) there were still a couple of professors clinging to the idea that everyone would see the light and semantic web would be broadly implemented, but aside from that everyone else I've ever discussed it with has considered it a dead or vapourware technology. I am curious as to…

I've always believed that semantic web (in the sense of semantic connection technologies) would become a critical technology; just not in the way they said.

The idea of having semantic data alongside of your presentation data (embedding RDF statements in your web pages) is and always was stupid. They are separate concerns, and should live entirely separate from each other. You're not going to have content authors embedding machine-readable knowledge in with the human presentation; who the hell is going to bother with that kind of tedious, annoying work when their audience is humans?

However, data warehouses that can be automatically mined by smart machines for meaning is huge. It's still going to be awhile before our systems are powerful enough and there's data enough to make this worthwhile, but at our rate of data generation I doubt it'll be much longer before we simply NEED these kinds of connecting and semantic technologies in order to handle the ever-growing mountain of data.

I put the relationship type into my data format specifically as a bet on this: https://concise-encoding.org/#relationships

We still don't have any sizeable shared ontologies, but that's to be expected since only researchers are interested in it at this too-early stage. Once the shit hits the fan so-to-speak, we'll see some company or group build a serious reference ontology in record time.

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