
Steve Yegge's predictions from 2004 - gozzoo
http://steve.yegge.googlepages.com/ten-predictions
======
gfunk911
You guys seem to be saying he was wrong on most of them. I strongly disagree.
Sure, he didn't nail every one exactly, because he's not psychic, but for all
of them, he correctly saw the trend, and he's very in the ballpark.

1\. This is happening, just not as quickly as he thought, and with JSON. _(XML
Databases)_

2\. If you actually read what he wrote, this is obviously happening. EC2,
Github, Heroku. _(Open Source Hosting)_

3\. Using processes instead of threads is absolutely rising in popularity.

4\. Off on the timing, but we are in the middle of an explosion of other JVM
languages. The JVM has clearly established itself as the best way to launch a
new language.

5\. Off on the timing, possibly off completely. Clojure is gaining in
popularity, which ties in with #4. _(Lisp in the Top 10)_

6\. Facebook. This one was easy. _(Community Hangout)_

7\. He was actually late on this one. iPhone obviously. _(Mobile Computing 5
Years Out)_

8\. Google Apps. _(I'll Pay Google)_

9\. Wrong literally, but if you take out netbooks, which weren't around, Apple
sells the large majority of $1000+ laptops, and they obviously sell a ton of
iPhones, which are just small computing devices. _(Apple Selling Laptops)_

~~~
tjogin
In summary, he _nailed it_ as far as where the the wind is blowing but was
wrong on timing; on all accounts except the last one. This is no bad feat as
nailing both the direction and timing is nearly impossible.

Compare with, for instance, Bill Gates, who has been claiming that speech
recognition as a primary means to control computers is just five years away,
for over twenty-five years now.

~~~
Tuna-Fish
Sorry, but there's a saying in investing: "Right but early is wrong. Right but
late is wrong."

Any fool can make a very long list of predictions that will all turn out to be
correct, even in the stock market, as long as he doesn't have to give them a
timeline. Plenty of people saw the housing crash, for example, and plenty of
them understood that certain banks were underwater, and regardless of their
actions, they were going to go under. However, just knowing that isn't
actually worth anything -- a short position carries a heavy premium in
interest, and in the famous words of Keynes: "The markets can remain
irrational longer than you can remain solvent."

~~~
troystribling
In your 'sayings' early and late are ambiguous. As far as investing is
concerned being right in a prediction means you profited, so the early-late
error bar is defined by the time in which you could profit by your prediction.
Applying this same rationale here the early-late error bar is harder to
define, since profit is not clear and somewhat subjective. So taking some
liberties with early-late and right-wrong is I feel appropriate.

Taking into consideration that these predictions are 5+ years old I think they
are pretty good. He clearly spotted several trends whose future significance
was at the time not obvious. If someone started a business believing one of
these trends had promise it is possible that the business would have been
successful. I do feel that for what he was trying to accomplish being early or
late by a couple of years or off on a detail but correct in spirit is not
significant.

Also, I think it is important to add that making predictions like these is
very important becuase the future develops from our perceptions of what it
will be.

------
presidentender
I used to be a 'wizard' (player admin) for Yegge's GMUD, Wyvern (he mentions
it occasionally in his newer world-facing blog; it can be found at
www.cabochon.com). He doesn't just make predictions like this, he actually
bets on them.

For example, he bet that people would want to play a game with deep and
intriguing gameplay regardless of the graphics. Then he bet that people would
want to play it on a handheld device (specifically, he targeted the Sharp
Zaurus, but the game is compatible with some other palmtops of the same era).
I think he's right on the first count, but too early on the second (targeting
the iPhone, for instance, would probably have been more successful).

There are a number of other reasons the game didn't take off, but the point is
that he's not an armchair pundit, shouting that we should all listen to him
and take action based on his foresight. If anything, he's taking action, and
just logging the predictions that prompted him.

~~~
brianwisti
Wyvern on an iPhone. That's exactly what I want to see, and what the other
games I've been playing don't quite match up to. It has a low demand on the
graphics and network side of things, but has a rich and rewarding game play
experience. For me, obviously.

I haven't played that for a few years. I'm going to have to start again.

~~~
presidentender
I don't know exactly what it was, but the game lost a lot of magic for me at
some point. Now the aesthetic is totally different, and I just can't get back
into it.

------
icey
TL;DR:

Prediction #1: XML databases will surpass relational databases in popularity
by 2011.

Prediction #2: Someone will make a lot of money by hosting open-source web
applications.

Prediction #3: Multi-threaded programming will fall out of favor by 2012.

Prediction #4: Java's "market share" on the JVM will drop below 50% by 2010.

Prediction #5: Lisp will be in the top 10 most popular programming languages
by 2010.

Prediction #6: A new internet community-hangout will appear. One that you and
I will frequent.

Prediction #7: The mobile/wireless/handheld market is still at least 5 years
out.

Prediction #8: Someday I will voluntarily pay Google for one of their
services.

Prediction #9: Apple's laptop sales will exceed those of HP/Compaq, IBM, Dell
and Gateway combined by 2010.

Prediction #10: In five years' time, most programmers will still be average.

~~~
jimbokun
#1 is kinda sorta like the NoSQL movement (hierarchical versus relational
modeling, do away with much of the O-R impedance mismatch).

#2 Github?

#3 The evils of threads, and how to replace them with something else to use
multi-cores, is very high on the list of blogged about programming topics.
Several new languages have staked their claim to fame largely on how they
handle concurrency. So, yes, this one was understated, if anything.

#4 Not there yet, but might be on that trajectory if there is some "tipping
point" of Java programmers en masse getting fed up with Java's limitations.
There are certainly enough alternative JVM languages to choose from.

#5 Does Clojure make the top 10? Certainly not in number of users, but maybe
in most popular to blog about.

#6 Facebook.

#7 iPhone was released June, 2007, beating his prediction by a couple of
years.

#8 Maybe if you buy an Android phone from them?

#9 Apple laptops are immensely popular, but the scale of this prediction was a
little ridiculous. Between iPhone and iPod, it's possible that there are more
people who own an Apple product than own a product from all those companies
combined.

#10 Now that's just insulting. Who's he calling average?

~~~
revorad
_#10 Now that's just insulting. Who's he calling average?_

The average programmer.

~~~
polynomial
As if that weren't bad enough, at least half of them are still _below_
average.

~~~
nuclear_eclipse
Only if it's a standard distribution (eg bell curve). It's quite possible with
a non-standard distribution to have much more than half above average as well.
Now _median_ on the other hand, by definition, separates the distribution in
half... </pedantic>

~~~
plorkyeran
Or perhaps much more than half below average.

------
antirez
#1: XML DB has nothing to do with NoSQL. Even if there is some external
similarity with document stores actually the main point of the author is that
people don't want to perform conversions. This was not the reason NoSQL
started at all and not our main problem with SQL in the latest years.

#2: This has nothing to do with Github or hosting of _source code_. Here the
author was referring to sell the service of _running_ a web application for
you, like a forum or a wiki, and so forth. something like vanilla forums or
wordpress.org are doing indeed. IMHO this prediction was more or less totally
wrong, as the latest five years showed us that web applications are a big
business but companies will try to rewrite from scratch the product they are
offering in order to take it closed source, to offer more in terms of
usability, and probably even for scalability concerns.

Actually the reverse happened, for instance Reddit instead to use a Digg clone
wrote the code, and later released it as open source.

------
ZachPruckowski
The important thing to remember when grading predictions is that most
predictions are about trends. So the important thing isn't whether "The Year
of MobilePhone Computing" was 2008 or 2009 or 2010, the important thing is
that it was still a few years off from 2004. It's the same thing as the
"Singularity" guy's predictions. When you're predicting things 6 months in
advance, you should get graded on a lot harder of a curve than predicting
things 6 years in advance or 16 years in advance.

------
sker
I think he nailed it with prediction #7. Many of you are saying he was late
because the iPhone was released in 2007. Well, the iPhone SDK wasn't released
until 2008 and the industry didn't step up to the game until 2009 when a bunch
of Android handsets started to come out.

I do think he was wrong on most of the others, though.

------
bioweek
It sucks he didn't put a date on that post. Kind of an egregious oversite,
right.

~~~
rudd
Not sure if you're being sarcastic, but the date is right at the bottom of the
post: "(Published Nov 10th, 2004)"

------
j_baker
I think #10 is pretty much a truism (but still important to remember!).

------
intellectronica
So basically he didn't get anything but #6 (facebook) and #10 (which is more
of an insider joke than a prediction) right. Remember this next time you read
Yegge's rants.

~~~
randallsquared
_Remember this next time you read Yegge's rants._

Well, even deep understanding doesn't imply the ability to predict, unless
chance plays little role -- a stipulation which is manifestly not the case,
here.

Edit: grammar

~~~
intellectronica
Deep understanding should discourage one from making predictions, though.

~~~
randallsquared
Depends on your goal. If your goal is to avoid making statements that are
wrong, then sure. If your goal is to be interesting and say provocative
things, maybe not so much. :)

