I'm much more interested in what HN contributors believe to be the emerging tech trends of 2016, particularly in software development. Also if there are any specific recommendations of websites that make these things more discoverable in the future. (Checking GitHub trends every day 'doesn't scale'!)
- WebAssembly and utter dominance of browsers and JavaScript as a development platform. I don't particularly like the latter very much, but it's hard for me to deny it is happening. People are writing desktop apps using Electron, mobile apps are being made as embedded browsers or replaced entirely by websites, and some folks are even making JavaScript (and node.js) work on microcontrollers.
- More and more languages seem to be getting REPLs, so maybe - in a few more decades - we'll see something resembling the good development environments of the Lisp Machines time.
- Who knows, maybe we will finally decentralize the cloud again? I don't fully understand the things like AWS Lambda, "compute services" and other related buzzwords, but I know the model I'd like to see - where the cloud provides only computing power, and code can be run on data as decided by users instead of users having to give away their data to the owners of the code. I'm not sure if this is how things turn out, but I feel like some components of that better future are being built now.
- We'll see an emergence of another job - of people who are something between a developer and a devops, people who "orchestrate" all that god-awful tooling mess of build systems, packaging systems, containers, balancers, fleets, forward-reverse-backward distributed scheduling proxies and whatnot. It's getting out of hand very fast.
EDIT: Cloud-to-Butt extension strikes again; I keep forgetting about it when editing posts...
Regarding your third point (decentralized web), I just discovered this recently: https://sandstorm.io/. Something like that might start becoming more common!
A third party which manages Sandstorm like infrastructure for me. Consider it equivalent of hiring a lawyer to represent YOU and not to somehow facilitate a court case.
Yeah, I've discovered it here some time ago and I've been keeping an eye on them ever since. I really like the idea of being able to easily deploy web apps on your own infrastructure.
I'm not a fan, but there are interesting things happening Javascript even in systems programming. For example, consider Joyent's open-source NFS server in javascript.
Why is that? It's not perfect, but we have a number of vital systems programming facilities available.
For instance, we can (through mdb, the debugger, and the mdb_v8 module) inspect all of the Javascript (and native) state in a core file -- all of the Javascript objects, the current stack trace with arguments for each frame, etc. That core file can be taken at our discretion via gcore(1) without terminating the process, or in response to an abort(3C) or unhandled Javascript exception.
We also have excellent support for dynamic instrumentation, via DTrace and USDT. DTrace has essentially zero overhead for disabled probes and doesn't require rebuilding, reconfiguring, or even restarting the process in question to start collecting data. We've added DTrace probes to "bunyan", our logging framework, so that we can get TRACE level logs as probe firings without needing them to be enabled all the time. We've also added probes to "restify", the HTTP server upon which we build most of our REST services, so that we can track the invocation of particular routes and handlers.
Both of these facilities are vital for chasing down and fixing bugs in production systems, without which many issues would be much harder -- or even impossible! -- to solve. This is especially for the not insignificant class of bugs that _only_ show up in production and are _not_ reproducible. Or the class of bugs that we have hit at most once in a week, a month, a year, or (practically) ever.
I'm always on the look out for new languages and platforms that provide these features, but in the mean time we do some pretty solid systems programming work with Javascript.
I'm not disputing that good tools are possible in any language, nor am I disputing good tools don't exist which were written in JavaScript.
But so far I have not seen enough benefits to outweigh the risks.
And to me, JavaScript has too many risks. The language has way too many gotchas and it is extremely easy to write a system utility that isn't rock solid.
And I very much dislike using system utilities if they are not rock solid.
Personally, I don't like the JavaScript community. Call me old and grumpy, but what I see is mostly inexperienced people building framework after framework, tool after tool, building layers upon layers upon layers of cruft without a minute of consideration whether it's needed at all (or worth the electricity it uses up). It's like the polar opposite of systems programming.
Ha, I had the Cloud-to-Butt extension installed for a while as well. I got very confused a few days later when I started reading about point butts everywhere. I work with point clouds...
Reversing the flow of information to a few companies that gives them unprecedented power over the people. More specifically, decentralizing the web with things like:
* Tim Berners-Lee Solid (store your data in “pods” (personal online data stores) that are hosted wherever you would like but only allow applications you have given permission to access)
I don't know about "emerging", but at this point it's impossible not to mention AR/VR and machine learning. Developer Economics highlighted both in their latest report [1] - and that is also a partial answer to your second question, their free quarterly surveys are a good way to keep an eye on tech trends.
As an aside, I remain puzzled by HN's hit-and-miss deduplication. Sometimes I submit something and it's caught immediately. Then [2] happens.
VR will be a niche entertainment conduit not entirely unlike speciality televisions to start, but then the technology will normalize and filter to every home. In 5-10 years, expect VR to be as pervasive as consoles, if not sooner.
Though in keeping with the spirit of the post, that's not 2016.
Maybe the end of professionalized IT outside of tech companies. I think we are moving towards even non technical teams selecting and administrating their own devices, and getting business done with a selection of SAS offerings.
There will still be a need for technical contractors to do things like configure salesforce or help choose a set of services that integrate nicely. But these needn't be developers in the classic sense. Short contracts, and trading on BA/negotiation rather than true technical skill.
I imagine it is possible to build a startup like TaskRabbit without writing a line of code now, and you could run that company without needing to own or rent a single server (or even a laptop with BYOD?).
Well the whole blockchain thing is part of a slightly broader potential trend: decentralization. We're starting to see social networks that are decentralized: like Dystopia and another more recent one i can't remember the name of. But, I don't think they're catching on - there's not much interest from users. These things basically use client desktops as mini-servers to serve up pages that used to come from a centralized location. In theory, technically speaking, many things could be run this way.
The million dollar question is: why should we do this? Where's the value? Are users so paranoid about centralized tech companies owning their content, that they'd be willing to do all this?
Decentralized social software allows permissionless innovation on top. Anyone can add new features and release them to users. These networks are less capable and less user friendly today, but they won't stay that way, especially if we find a good way to fund development work on them. Users will choose decentralized software not because of ideology or paranoia. They will choose it because it will be better, just like they chose the open internet over AOL.
That's good point about "permissionless innovation". It will be interesting to see where this has the most value and what problems it solves, that can't already be solved by the current incumbents.
How far along are they? Are there companies already making products with any of these? I love reading about experiment results, but it's hard to tell how preliminary the technology is.
Perovskite materials such as methylammonium lead halides are cheap to produce and simple to manufacture.
Solar cell efficiencies of devices using these materials have increased from 3.8% in 2009 to 22.1% in early 2016,[3] making this the fastest-advancing solar technology to date
Horizon scanning for emerging technologies is crucial to staying abreast of developments that can radically transform our world, enabling timely expert analysis in preparation for these disruptors.
Who are these experts? And have they ever accurately predicted the future, much less helped us prepare for it?
Although the field of futurology often shows up in broader media as basically sci-fi worldbuilding presented as prediction, actual scenario and technological forecasting is a pretty well developed field with a long(ish) history of serious consideration and attempts.
For instance, Theodore von Karman headed up a group that predicted drones, ICMBs, supersonic aircraft, and a good bit more. In 1945. When the most advanced planes in field were piston powered and prop driven.
Since then, developments like the Delphi technique and prediction markets have helped to make forecasts even more refined. A more on the point question might be whether forecasts are simply become self-fulfilling prophecies since they're relied on so heavily by strategic planners in government and industry.
all levels above 1 assumes that the compounding effect of technology will continue into the future, but it's also possible that this growth will level off or come in spurts as major advancements are made, and that the current exponential growth is simply our civilization moving from one plateau to another.
At SL3~4 some of the ideas also assume that the space of possible technology/intelligence is a smooth continuum that extends to infinity. However it's perfectly possible (likely, in fact) that faster-than-light travel is simply a physical impossibility, or that there is a ceiling on intelligence which is a very ill-defined quantity to begin with.
Bearing that in mind, here is my slightly less optimistic prognostication:
Technology will reach a plateau as the low-hanging fruit borne of the scientific method is exhausted. Progress will still be made linearly, with each year bringing less change than the last. Although the total number of minds working on technological problems will increase, the mental effort required to reach the state of the art in very narrow disciplines will approach one human life time. New and exciting technology will be produced, but it will often be the application of existing technology to a new field rather than the result of fundamental research. This state continues for several hundred years, after which linear progress has produced significant results in human lifespan, intelligence or both via genetic engineering and all bets are off.
That put some things into perspective. Thanks for posting that. I've been pretty much at SL0 (slightly into SL1, been considering VR a bit) with my thinking and personal projects, I realized, when I should be at least SL2 (not having a term for it), at least as far as my thinking, if I'm wanting to make a long-term impact. Might not go quite as far as RAW did, though, even though I like him a lot.
SL2 tech: major genetic engineering, medical immortality, interstellar travel, and new “alien” cultures
SL3 tech: Immortality, nanotechnology, human-equivalent AI, intelligence increase, uploading, total body revision, intergalactic exploration, megascale engineering
I think we're making progress toward SL3 tech as well as SL2 tech. Things like interstellar travel and "alien" cultures seem off (unless you could today's culture "alien" to the past). However with recent work in nanotechnology and AI (even megascale engineering), we can already see ourselves working on SL3 tech today.
That link was quite the fascinating read. Here's an open question, but do others experience some form of anxiety when thinking about future developments such as this?
It's not out of fear. To me, I want to truly experience the advances, not just perish and be forgotten in time. Science is so blissfully fascinating; there's so much yet to learn.
Perhaps a better way of putting it is a realization of your own mortality?
I wonder what the future of security breaches and invasion of privacy and theft look like when there are sensors everywhere, data is flowing in all directions, and all locks are digital.
I apologize, but I couldn't help myself. Does anything meaningful come out of such lists ever?
I don't know much about the new solar cells or health technologies, but some unsoliticed opinions on the things I know something about:
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> With the Internet of Things expected to comprise 30 billion connected devices by 2020, one of the most exciting areas of focus today is now on nanosensors capable of circulating in the human body or being embedded in construction materials
Yeah, cool, but where are those sensors exactly, because I'm yet to hear of one? I mean, it seems like we're inventing a new buzz-phrase before we're even done with the previous one - IoT is something between a joke and a blatant assault on the concepts of privacy and ownership performed by greedy businesses. That it is "expected to comprise 30 billion connected devices" means exactly nothing.
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> With venture investment related to the online currency bitcoin exceeding $1 billion in 2015 alone, the economic and social impact of blockchain’s potential to fundamentally change the way markets and governments work is only now emerging.
Again, the amount of money invested in Bitcoin doesn't really mean much except maybe that rich people like to gamble. Looking at all the Bitcoin-related discussions here and elsewhere, I don't see that much changed over the years - it still seems to be a e-currency system built on top of wasting tremendous amounts of electricity, with various promises that are supported by lots of "cryptobabble" but somehow are never realized. I can't see why those promises are to become real now.
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> Shared advances in natural language processing and social awareness algorithms, coupled with an unprecedented availability of data, will soon allow smart digital assistants to help with a vast range of tasks, from keeping track of one’s finances and health to advising on wardrobe choice.
Well, I guess it depends on what one means by "AI", but really - wake me up when Siri or Google Now becomes anything more than a glorified chatbot hooked up to a search engine. Sure, search engines are great. Good voice recognition is also great. But nobody seems to be working on things that would be really meaningful to people in their daily lives. Some ideas:
- Run optimization algorithms against my life - e.g. shopping routines, eating habits, day plans, etc.
- Better yet, give me a tool I can easily use to apply optimization algorithms against various problems I meet daily. What is the measure of intelligence if not its strength of optimiziation? Setting an alarm on my phone ain't it. Not unless it's done automatically as a part of a process of optimizing my resting patterns.
- More to the ground, give me something that will read IRC streams or work chats for me and auto-summarize them so that I don't have to sift through all the cruft. Maybe it could even reply for me too when I'm busy.
Basically, a phone that talks to you in a female voice does not an AI make.
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In short - I find such lists to be based on imagination and justified by looking at the market "hype" about particular technologies. Neither of these have any grounding in reality.
That's exactly the purpose, the list applies the wonder of the human imagination to emerging tech. The purpose is to spark further imagination and wonder. Inspiration has value on its own.
I've been reading lists like these for decades. Popular Science, Scientific America, Compute, Wired, etc. These magazines all inspired me to imagine computing problems in different ways. They encouraged me to read more about new technologies. They are part of how I think now. I believe this to be an incredible thing.
