

Is Programming Less Exciting Today? - ct
http://www.javaworld.com/community/?q=node/8300

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mindcrime
I kinda agree with the general spirit of this post, but I'll posit that
there's a lot of stuff that's "old and new again." That is, things that were
once new and shiny, that didn't catch on or really take off "big time" for
whatever reason, but are waiting for that "second wind." Some things are just
ahead of their times anyway.

That said, some of what excites me these days:

The new batch of programming languages that are coming out / came out
recently: Clojure, Scala, Rust, Go, Fantom, Ceylon, etc.

Machine Learning, especially with the availability of a toolkit like Hadoop
that prepackages scalable version of many popular algorithms.

Technologies for extracting knowledge (with rich semantics) from unstructured
data (Apache UIMA, for example). And on a related note, things like Apache
OpenNLP.

And I'm still fascinated with the general notion of a "Digital Nervous System"
for organizations, where the IT systems are really analogous to the human
autonomic nervous system. Bill Gates started hyping up that phrase back in the
mid to late 90's (it existed before then, but Gates really got some buzz
behind it), but nobody seems to have truly achieved that level of integration
and sophistication to this day.

Semantic Web technologies are something I have a lot of interest in, and that
still excite me as well.

I'm really intrigued by the possibilities of applying tools from Network
Science and Social Network Analysis to different kinds of problems as well.
It's not _strictly_ programming related, but there's interesting stuff going
on in the world of complex dynamic systems and studies of emergent behavior,
that could have some impact on computing in days to come.

Business Intelligence, Data Mining, Multi-agent Systems, Grid Computing, Swarm
Computing, Evolutionary Computation, Reconfigurable Computing, Genetic
Programming, Biocomputing, and, hell, even good-old-fashioned AI stuff (logic
programming, expert systems, etc) still excite me. I believe there's still
progress to be made in all of these areas.

But, then again, I'm an old fart, so what do I know? Now _getoffamylawn_ while
I go play a MUD and surf Gopherspace.

------
kls
_It all feels like we’ve been here before, with only the names having changed_

They have, while there is no denying that there where significant improvements
with the last total technology shift, we do have to accept that we throw
everything out and start over again. I sometime wonder where we would be if a
language like LISP had come to the forefront and inertia stayed behind it.
When we start over on new stacks there is a great deal of reinventing the
wheel. Not that that has not contributed to forward progress, but I cant help
but imagine what if something like the JDK had been around for lisp back in
the 70-80's and we kept on running with it, what if everyone standardized on
it. All of the recycling would have been avoided and we would certainly be in
a different place. Whether it would be ahead of what we have now is impossible
to know, but what can be stated is that the move from the web to mobile was
the same as from the PC to the web, which was the same as from the mainframe
from to the PC. WE seem to keep reimplementing a lot of the same systems on
the next platform. How many accounting systems have been implemented for the
Mainframe -> PC -> web and now mobile. But yes it does seem that every
generation and every new platform changes out the underlining tools and we set
of to re-implement systems in those tools. Along the way we get novel things
like Google and Facebook, but for a good deal of the industry it is just
implementing the same systems on the next platform.

------
6ren
There's yet another set of examples from gaming e.g.
[http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/owhaz/dear_nimblebit...](http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/owhaz/dear_nimblebit_we_feel_your_pain/)

Alan Kay claimed there's only three new things in computers since 1980 (though
he couldn't remember what they were):
[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/357813/help-me-
remember-a...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/357813/help-me-remember-a-
quote-from-alan-kay) and when he asked for new things since 1980, the web
seems to be the only one
[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/432922/significant-new-
in...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/432922/significant-new-inventions-
in-computing-since-1980)

One fundamental change is that computing is a fully accepted consumer market.
I hear ordinary folk using technical jargon at in cafes. It's in a hit sitcom
(big bang theory). This means that anything new won't feel any more special
than new toothpaste or washing powder technology. The future has become
commonplace, like the grimy worn spaceships of star wars. So I guess we're
"hipsters". But excitement over the new has always been fundamental to science
and technology.

There's another view: If things seem boring, it's because _you_ are boring.
Invent something interesting.

------
jamesbritt
There's a difference between "done before" and "done well."

Also, the increase in network and computation speeds and the reduction in size
of components means that things that were merely doable in the past are now
doable in more interesting and practical ways.

------
hkarthik
There's still a lot to be excited about. Here's just a few things that excite
me:

* Programmers are building and financing viable products on their own.

* They're deploying to the cloud because it's cheaper and more approachable for the little guy.

* They have new distribution methods available to them via App Stores and don't have to rely on software salesmen.

* They can measure nearly everything their users do.

* They can work from anywhere on distributed teams and have a good shot at success while maintaining a healthy work/life balance.

In short, yes programming hasn't changed much, but the way software gets built
is changing a lot. That's still very exciting.

------
ramblerman
I think this man is just burnt out.

