
Ask HN: Trending technologies worth learning now? - bluepanda_
As a computer scientist, If I want to start learning a technology whose demand is and will remain increasing, be it software development, artificial intelligence, or computer security for example, which one should it be?
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mindcrime
Semantic Web tech. I know, I know... it's easy to sit back and say "WTF, the
Semantic Web is a pipe-dream, and it's been being developed for 15 years and
it isn't here yet" etc., etc.

I will counter that by contending that the Semantic Web _is_ here, just not
fully so, and furthermore, that a more and more complete Semantic Web is
inevitable.

My feeling is that you couldn't go wrong learning RDF, SPARQL, etc, AND, more
specifically, focus on NLP. Why NLP? Because NLP is the bridge between the
gazillions of petabytes of "stuff" that's out there that _isn't_ part of the
Semantic Web, and the structured data that does make up the Semantic Web. When
you can use NLP (and related tech) to extract semantic meaning from free-form
text and then make it part of the Semantic Web, that's pretty powerful stuff.

Take a look, for example, at Apache Stanbol[1] and the stuff they're doing
with extracting structure from text.

Also, look at things like dbpedia[2] and the Linked Data[3] initiative.
Seriously, seriously cool stuff is going on...

[1]: <http://stanbol.apache.org>

[2]: <http://www.dbpedia.org>

[3]: <http://linkeddata.org>

~~~
bluepanda_
It's funny, because besides RDF and NLP, I haven't heard of any of these
technologies. Also, it coincides with my current interest in machine learning,
so that's great. I will look into these. Thank you!

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X4
I'm sorry, but I think the question won't lead to a sufficient answer. Because
what you describe is in fact becoming "services offered" (through
(web-)technology). You're asking which field you should put your focus on, but
the question is which fields are going to be required in the future. Web 3.0
was proposed by Sir Tim B. Lee and most of his predictions have become true.
That's why I think that the question should be formulated as: "How can I
benefit humanity as a computer scientist?" or What can I do to realize Web3.0
as a computer scientist.

The answer of the user "mindcrime" is a direct answer to the Web3.0 question,
but I thought that you should know the background. As the background knowledge
behind the answer is sometimes more helpful than the answer itself.

Building Services is trending right now and building technologies and
architectures that are able to scale to the requirements of these services are
part of the trend.

Key characteristics are: Low barriers to entry, little or no capital
expenditure, massive scalability, multitenancy, device independence, location
independence. But it can be reduced to "benefit" only aswell.

Everything as a service (EaaS, XaaS) is a concept of offering Services through
technology. It is a subset of cloud computing, but not limited to. IaaS, PaaS
and SaaS are the most popular form of Service.

The most common and successful example is software as a service (SaaS), but
the term as a service has been associated and used with many core components
of cloud computing including communication, infrastructure, data and
platforms. Humans as a Service (HuaaS) and other creative ways of using
technology and architecture to solve problems are exciting forms of these
Services.

Tl;Dr:

Learn what you think will make the world (a little) better as a computer
scientist. Semantic Web, Web3.0, Online Education and Home Schooling are the
horses I would bet on. If you don't trust us, hack Google Trends and "similar
services" <http://www.google.com/trends/>

------
zpk
Stats, Coursera+hadoop OR

Mobile java+droid / IOS OR

Rapid Web Django+Python or ROR+Ruby

Pick a vertical, then a technology and do a project.

