
Ask HN: What does the future hold for developers? - drb311
Asking for a friend...<p>1. What will change most for developers in the next 2 years?<p>2. How will the tech sector change in the next 5 years?<p>3. How will the world of 2020 be different from today?<p>4. What technologies emerging today will be pervasive in 2025?<p>This is not a test! Don&#x27;t worry about being accurate. Please share what you believe is likely to happen over the next few years. I&#x27;m looking for a range of interesting, plausible ideas.
======
segmondy
1\. For most developers nothing much will change, some will learn new
languages and frameworks and think they discovered a new world, but it's the
same ol' thing.

2\. The tech sector would have cast it's vote on rust, either it has been
adopted or it's just going to be a niche language. Elixir is going to be more
popular than rust. Swift is going to be more popular than rust.

3\. There will be new AI adaptations to Machine learning and Deep learning
algorithms with fancier names, and we will hear that AI is still coming.
General AI will still remain unrealized. Developers will be much more better,
we will have generations of developers that learned software engineering from
a young age and learned how to work with massive code base from a very young
age. Awesome tooling for managing software complexity will exist.

4\. Swift, PHP, Logical Languages will become popular again.

------
awjr
1) JavaScript is dying. Long live transpiling (typescript/babel/etc).

2) Internet of Things _might_ finally realise it's full potential.

3) Open Data from Governments enabling companies and individuals to leverage
value and deliver new services.

4) Surveillance, tracking, and behavioural prediction. Your phone, your car,
your wallet, and your face all broadcast information. It just needs picking
up, putting into a data lake and analysing. Expect better traffic management,
intelligent congestion charging, and targeted arrests. All fed by advancements
in IoT.

~~~
msimpson
JavaScript is improving and will replace the need for Babel.

FTFY.

~~~
awjr
Dunno, I've been working on a large Typescript project for the last year
(10+devs), and I have to say, it has been an absolute godsend.

I see transpiling a key part of JavaScript going forward.

~~~
msimpson
When Typescript gets an engine capable of direct competition with JavaScript,
then you can claim JavaScript is "dying." Until then, your usage of Typescript
is no different than Objective-C vs. C.

~~~
matthewmacleod
Pretty big goddamn difference there though!

That's a little like claiming that essentially every language is the same,
because they all end up as machine code.

~~~
msimpson
C++ and Objective-C both started out as preprocessors of C. So feel free to
define the line where a language extension becomes its own independent
language. But for me, that line exists where the dependence upon the parent
language ends; just as it did with both C++ and Objective-C.

At present TypeScript is defined as a superset of JavaScript and is therefore
just a broad extension of it. Until its popularity and usage spreads to the
point that a full interpreter arrives capable of removing its dependence on
JavaScript, it is not a separate language and JavaScript is not "dying."

That is my point, and it's not that big of a difference if you understand my
historical context. View Dart for more failures of this exact nature.

------
contingencies
1\. A combination of public education and technically viable alternate funding
streams will destroy VC/registered corporation modes of capital/motivation for
a greater number of talented developers able to harness public interest. This
is the biggest change: social.

2\. The remote gig thing will begin to dissipate.

3\. The Chinese RMB will be a global reserve currency and the Chinese
international banking system will offer a viable alternative to SWIFT. More of
the world will have adopted the IBAN, the US will still have its head in the
sand. More people will leave western countries for the developing world, where
overarching government surveillance and cost of living concerns do not
encroach on daily life, and education and political stability have improved.

4\. The biggest technology shift will be the mass adoption of wireless ad-
hoc/mesh networking. The biggest losers will be mobile carriers and government
surveillance, who will push hard politically to ban such direct communication
between citizens by asserting that such communication is dangerous and that
only terrorists and poor people have [this mode of] conversations.

------
dirtyaura
Virtual Reality - the quality of experience is already there and a lot of
talented people working on VR apps. Totally new toolchains will emerge, but
game programming background gives a head-start.

Deep learning is potentially the big breakthrough in AI and ML, already big
companies are doing interesting stuff with it. Mastering deep learning will
give you superpowers in coming years.

Mobile. Never downplay mobile. It has changed consumer market, but it has
still a lot of opportunities especially in business side. There is no silver
bullet for cross platform development, thus having native dev skills for iOS
or Android will still be relevant in 5 years

~~~
drb311
Thank you. Agree we've not yet seen mobile do its thing on the business side.
Slack platform looks like a step towards new paradigm for business software,
first of many I guess?

Do you see AI and ML as core skills for developers in the future or will it
remain a specialism? What % of developers will have some AI/ML related skill
on their CV in 2025?

(Funny how in all this tech the CV refuses to go away.)

------
jdmoreira
I'll give my best... :)

1\. Hardly anything will change. Maybe we'll start buying arm machines. Apple
might also change from x86 to arm on laptops

2\. Being a programmer will be much less glamorized. And we'll start to be
blamed for half of world's problems

3\. People will have multiple part-times. Remote jobs will start to be
mainstream. A lot of people will do some hours a week for amazon turk and/or
sharing economy businesses.

4\. Our UIs/UX will be totally augmented with AI. Google glass on steroids.
Also, our bodies will have a couple of sensors plugged-in. (Some people will
still use emacs)

~~~
insoluble
> Being a programmer will be much less glamorized.

This is exactly what I am expecting more than perhaps any other significant
change within this time-frame. When influential social programs try to push as
many young people as possible into a specific set of professions, you can
expect the value and glamour of those professions to decrease a substantial
amount. Developers cannot possibly be immune to the principles of supply-and-
demand. Naturally there will still be pockets of high value, but those pockets
will grow ever more sparse.

------
Raed667
I think that by 2025 code-generation will become a big thing in CS. Most logic
and UI will be drag-and-drop and all "coders" will have to do is to fine tune
the business specific parts of the app.

~~~
threesixandnine
I heard this in 1991. They said it'll be available in 2000. Few more days and
we'll be in 2016...

just saying....

~~~
Raed667
To be fair, we have a lot of UI generators (Think SquareSpace, Wordpress
themes,etc..) and some fairly good simple algorithm generators like Scratch,
heck you can draw an UML class diagram and get the classes generated to
basically any language. We have been slow, but we will be there.

------
eecks
1) In the next 2 years not much will change. Angular 2 will be released with
TypeScript so as another comment said transpiling will become more popular.

2) Security will continue to be a popular topic. Privacy will be important and
lots of apps (browsers/email/OSes) will push a privacy point of view.

4) By 2025 hopefully driving cars will become mainstream. With that I can see
apps being built for these smart cars. Hopefully a viable alternative to
Google will become more mainstream by then too.

------
1123581321
1\. Front-end development won't involve much custom CSS.

2\. You'll be able to raise seed money the way you apply online for a credit
card.

3\. Most underfunded institutions/infrastructures will either be shut
down/abandoned or have a financially responsible maintenance/replacement plan
in place. This includes US healthcare.

4\. Home solar/battery with a reasonable ROI will be in every new construction
or be a standard home improvement.

~~~
ThrustVectoring
I doubt number 2 - financing a start-up is much more like a hiring decision
than a creditworthiness decision.

~~~
1123581321
I actually think those are going to get faster as well.

------
staunch
IMHO: You shouldn't have claimed to be "asking for a friend" when the reason
for this post is clearly commercial.

~~~
drb311
Fair point. No deceit intended. I'll edit OP when at a computer. (Can't find
edit option on phone.)

~~~
drb311
Looks like I'm too late to edit. Sorry about that.

------
cdnsteve
1\. Things like graphql for rest apis will be the standard. There will be more
mature languages and tools than ever to choose from. Swift will see some
uptake as a web language.

2\. Competition will disrupt JS as the only front-end language.

3\. 2020 well have standardized communication protocol for iot. Things can
discover things near it and share/discover and interact.

4\. Skynet.

------
edimaudo
What's the reason behind the question?

~~~
drb311
I'm managing editor at Packt. I want to understand what skills developers will
need over the next few years, so that we can help them skill up today.

We want to empower all developers to do amazing things and help build the
future.

The biggest danger for us isn't wrongly predicting something that doesn't
happen, but missing something that DOES happen. I've been in Packt almost
since the start. We were among the first to really spot Open Source CMSs and
development frameworks. But I still have nightmares about how long it took us
to appreciate the full implications of iOS and Android. :S

But of course this is also just a bit of fun. I hope it's just plain
interesting for everyone.

~~~
edimaudo
Technical skills: That depends on your software stack, how much time
developers have to invest in themselves

Soft skills: Empathy, user-focused, good written communication, ability to
deal with ambiguity, tact in office politics, ability to be likeable and have
good small talk

