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Tech Predictions, 2013

By Ted Neward
Created 01/01/2013 - 05:22

Once again, it's time for my annual prognostication and review
of last year's efforts [1]. For those of you who've been long-time readers, you know
what this means, but for those two or three of you who haven't seen this before, let's
set the rules: if I got a prediction right from last year, you take a drink, and if
I didn't, you take a drink. (Best. Drinking game. EVAR!)

Let's begin....

Recap: 2012 Predictions

THEN: Lisps will be the languages to watch.

With Clojure leading the way, Lisps (that is, languages that are more or less loosely
based on Common Lisp or one of its variants) are slowly clawing their way back into
the limelight. Lisps are both functional languages as well as dynamic languages, which
gives them a significant reason for interest. Clojure runs on top of the JVM, which
makes it highly interoperable with other JVM languages/systems, and Clojure/CLR is
the version of Clojure for the CLR platform, though there seems to be less interest
in it in the .NET world (which is a mistake, if you ask me).

NOW: Clojure is definitely cementing itself as a "critic's darling"
of a language among the digital cognoscenti, but I don't see its uptake increasing--or
decreasing. It seems that, like so many critic's darlings, those who like it are using
it, and those who aren't have either never heard of it (the far more likely scenario)
or don't care for it. Datomic, a NoSQL written by the creator of Clojure (Rich Hickey),
is interesting, but I've not heard of many folks taking it up, either. And Clojure/CLR
is all but dead, it seems. I score myself a "0" on this one.

THEN: Functional languages will....

I have no idea. As I said above, I'm kind of stymied on the whole functional-language
thing and their future. I keep thinking they will either "take off" or "drop off",
and they keep tacking to the middle, doing neither, just sort of hanging in there
as a concept for programmers to take and run with. Mind you, I like functional languages,
and I want to see them become mainstream, or at least more so, but I keep wondering
if the mainstream programming public is ready to accept the ideas and concepts hiding
therein. So this year, let's try something different: I predict that they will remain
exactly where they are, neither "done" nor "accepted", but continue next year to sort
of hang out in the middle.

NOW: Functional concepts are slowly making their way into the mainstream
of programming topics, but in some cases, programmers seem to be picking-and-choosing
which of the functional concepts they believe in. I've heard developers argue vehemently
about "lazy values" but go "meh" about lack-of-side-effects, or vice versa. Moreover,
it seems that developers are still taking an "object-first, functional-when-I-need-it"
kind of approach, which seems a little object-heavy, if you ask me. So, since the
concepts seem to be taking some sort of shallow root, I don't know that I get the
point for this one, but at the same time, it's not like I was wildly off. So, let's
say "0" again.

THEN: F#'s type providers will show up in C# v.Next.

This one is actually a "gimme", if you look across the history of F# and C#: for almost
every version of F# v."N", features from that version show up in C# v."N+1". More
importantly, F# 3.0's type provider feature is an amazing idea, and one that I think
will open up language research in some very interesting ways. (Not sure what F#'s
type providers are or what they'll do for you? Check out Don Syme's talk on it at
BUILD last year.)

NOW: C# v.Next hasn't been announced yet, so I can't say that this
one has come true. We should start hearing some vague rumors out of Redmond soon,
though, so maybe 2013 will be the year that C# gets type providers (or some scaled-back
version thereof). Again, a "0".

THEN: Windows8 will generate a lot of chatter.

As 2012 progresses, Microsoft will try to force a lot of buzz around it by keeping
things under wraps until various points in the year that feel strategic (TechEd, BUILD,
etc). In doing so, though, they will annoy a number of people by not talking about
them more openly or transparently.

NOW: Oh, my, did they. Windows8 was announced with a bang, but Microsoft
(and Sinofsky, who ran the OS division up until recently) decided that they could
go it alone and leave critical partners (like Dropbox!) out of the loop entirely.
As a result, the Windows8 Store didn't have a lot of apps in it that people (including
myself) really expected would be there. And THEN, there was Surface... which took
everybody by surprise, as near as I can tell. Totally under wraps. I'm scoring myself
"+2" for that one.

THEN: Windows8 ("Metro")-style apps won't impress at first.

The more I think about it, the more I'm becoming convinced that Metro-style apps on
a desktop machine are going to collectively underwhelm. The UI simply isn't designed
for keyboard-and-mouse kinds of interaction, and that's going to be the hardware setup
that most people first experience Windows8 on--contrary to what (I think) Microsoft
thinks, people do not just have tablets laying around waiting for Windows 8 to be
installed on it, nor are they going to buy a Windows8 tablet just to try it out, at
least not until it's gathered some mojo behind it. Microsoft is going to have to finesse
the messaging here very, very finely, and that's not something they've shown themselves
to be particularly good at over the last half-decade.

NOW: I find myself somewhat at a loss how to score this one--on the
one hand, the "used-to-be-called-Metro"-style applications aren't terrible, and I
haven't really heard anyone complain about them tremendously, but at the same time,
I haven't heard anyone really go wild and ga-ga over them, either. Part of that, I
think, is because there just aren't a lot of apps out there for it yet, aside from
a rather skimpy selection of games (compared to the iOS App Store and Android Play
Store). Again, I think Microsoft really screwed themselves with this one--keeping
it all under wraps helped them make a big "Oh, WOW" kind of event buzz within the
conference hall when they announced Surface, for example, but that buzz sort of left
the room (figuratively) when people started looking for their favorite apps so they
could start using that device. (Which, by the way, isn't a bad piece of hardware,
I'm finding.) I'll give myself a "+1" for this.

THEN: Scala will get bigger, thanks to Heroku.

With the adoption of Scala and Play for their Java apps, Heroku is going to make Scala
look attractive as a development platform, and the adoption of Play by Typesafe (the
same people who brought you Akka) means that these four--Heroku, Scala, Play and Akka--will
combine into a very compelling and interesting platform. I'm looking forward to seeing
what comes of that.

NOW: We're going to get to cloud in a second, but on the whole, Heroku
is now starting to make Scala/Play attractive, arguably as attractive as Ruby/Rails
is. Play 2.0 unfortunately is not backwards-compatible with Play 1.x modules, which
hurts it, but hopefully the Play community brings that back up to speed fairly quickly.
"+1"

THEN: Cloud will continue to whip up a lot of air.

For all the hype and money spent on it, it doesn't really seem like cloud is gathering
commensurate amounts of traction, across all the various cloud providers with the
possible exception of Amazon's cloud system. But, as the different cloud platforms
start to diversify their platform technology (Microsoft seems to be leading the way
here, ironically, with the introduction of Java, Hadoop and some limited NoSQL bits
into their Azure offerings), and as we start to get more experience with the pricing
and costs of cloud, 2012 might be the year that we start to see mainstream cloud adoption,
beyond "just" the usage patterns we've seen so far (as a backing server for mobile
apps and as an easy way to spin up startups).

NOW: It's been whipping up air, all right, but it's starting to look
like tornadoes and hurricanes--the talk of 2012 seems to have been more around notable
cloud outages instead of notable cloud successes, capped off by a nationwide Netflix
outage on Christmas Eve that seemed to dominate my Facebook feed that night. Later
analysis suggested that the outage was with Amazon's AWS cloud, on which Netflix resides,
and boy, did that make a few heads spin. I suspect we haven't yet (as of this writing)
seen the last of that discussion. Overall, it seems like lots of startups and other
greenfield apps are being deployed to the cloud, but it seems like corporations are
hesitating to pull the trigger on an "all-in" kind of cloud adoption, because of some
of the fears surrounding cloud security and now (of all things) robustness. "+1"

THEN: Android tablets will start to gain momentum.

Amazon's Kindle Fire has hit the market strong, definitely better than any other Android-based
tablet before it. The Nooq (the Kindle's principal competitor, at least in the e-reader
world) is also an Android tablet, which means that right now, consumers can get into
the Android tablet world for far, far less than what an iPad costs. Apple rumors suggest
that they may have a 7" form factor tablet that will price competitively (in the $200/$300
range), but that's just rumor right now, and Apple has never shown an interest in
that form factor, which means the 7" world will remain exclusively Android's (at least
for now), and that's a nice form factor for a lot of things. This translates well
into more sales of Android tablets in general, I think.

NOW: Google's Nexus 7 came to dominate the discussion of the 7" tablet,
until...

THEN: Apple will release an iPad 3, and it will be "more of the
same".

Trying to predict Apple is generally a lost cause, particularly when it comes to their
vaunted iOS lines, but somewhere around the middle of the year would be ripe for a
new iPad, at the very least. (With the iPhone 4S out a few months ago, it's hard to
imagine they'd cannibalize those sales by releasing a new iPhone, until the end of
the year at the earliest.) Frankly, though, I don't expect the iPad 3 to be all that
big of a boost, just a faster processor, more storage, and probably about the same
size. Probably the only thing I'd want added to the iPad would be a USB port, but
that conflicts with the Apple desire to present the iPad as a "device", rather than
as a "computer". (USB ports smack of "computers", not self-contained "devices".)

NOW: ... the iPad Mini. Which, I'd like to point out, is just an
iPad in a 7" form factor. (Actually, I think it's a little bit bigger than most 7"
tablets--it looks to be a smidge wider than the other 7" tablets I have.) And the
"new iPad" (not the iPad 3, which I call a massive FAIL on the part of Apple marketing)
is exactly that: same iPad, just faster. And still no USB port on either the iPad
or iPad Mini. So between this one and the previous one, I score myself at "+3" across
both.

THEN: Apple will get hauled in front of the US government for...
something.

Apple's recent foray in the legal world, effectively informing Samsung that they can't
make square phones and offering advice as to what will avoid future litigation, smacks
of such hubris and arrogance, it makes Microsoft look like a Pollyanna Pushover by
comparison. It is pretty much a given, it seems to me, that a confrontation in the
legal halls is not far removed, either with the US or with the EU, over anti-cometitive
behavior. (And if this kind of behavior continues, and there is no legal action, it'll
be pretty apparent that Apple has a pretty good set of US Congressmen and Senators
in their pocket, something they probably learned from watching Microsoft and IBM slug
it out rather than just buy them off.)

NOW: Congress has started to take a serious look at the patent system
and how it's being used by patent trolls (of which, folks, I include Apple these days)
to stifle innovation and create this Byzantine system of cross-patent licensing that
only benefits the big players, which was exactly what the patent system was designed
to avoid. (Patents were supposed to be a way to allow inventors, who are often independents,
to avoid getting crushed by bigger, established, well-monetized firms.) Apple hasn't
been put squarely in the crosshairs, but the Economist's article on Apple, Google,
Microsoft and Amazon in the Dec 11th issue definitely points out that all four are
squarely in the sights of governments on both sides of the Atlantic. Still, no points
for me.

THEN: IBM will be entirely irrelevant again.

Look, IBM's main contribution to the Java world is/was Eclipse, and to a much lesser
degree, Harmony. With Eclipse more or less "done" (aside from all the work on plugins
being done by third parties), and with IBM abandoning Harmony in favor of OpenJDK,
IBM more or less removes themselves from the game, as far as developers are concerned.
Which shouldn't really be surprising--they've been more or less irrelevant pretty
much ever since the mid-2000s or so.

NOW: IBM who? Wait, didn't they used to make a really kick-ass laptop,
back when we liked using laptops? "+1"

THEN: Oracle will "screw it up" at least once.

Right now, the Java community is poised, like a starving vulture, waiting for Oracle
to do something else that demonstrates and befits their Evil Emperor status. The community
has already been quick (far too quick, if you ask me) to highlight Oracle's supposed
missteps, such as the JVM-crashing bug (which has already been fixed in the _u1 release
of Java7, which garnered no attention from the various Java news sites) and the debacle
around Hudson/Jenkins/whatever-the-heck-we-need-to-call-it-this-week. I'll grant you,
the Hudson/Jenkins debacle was deserving of ire, but Oracle is hardly the Evil Emperor
the community makes them out to be--at least, so far. (I'll admit it, though, I'm
a touch biased, both because Brian Goetz is a friend of mine and because Oracle TechNet
has asked me to write a column for them next year. Still, in the spirit of "innocent
until proven guilty"....)

NOW: It is with great pleasure that I score myself a "0" here. Oracle's
been pretty good about things, sticking with the OpenJDK approach to developing software
and talking very openly about what they're trying to do with Java8. They're not entirely
innocent, mind you--the fact that a Java install tries to monkey with my browser bar
by installing some plugin or other and so on is not something I really appreciate--but
they're not acting like Ming the Merciless, either. Matter of fact, they even seem
to be going out of their way to be community-inclusive, in some circles. I give myself
a "-1" here, and I'm happy to claim it. Good job, guys.

THEN: VMWare/SpringSource will start pushing their cloud solution
in a major way.

Companies like Microsoft and Google are pushing cloud solutions because Software-as-a-Service
is a reoccurring revenue model, generating revenue even in years when the product
hasn't incremented. VMWare, being a product company, is in the same boat--the only
time they make money is when they sell a new copy of their product, unless they can
start pushing their virtualization story onto hardware on behalf of clients--a.k.a.
"the cloud". With SpringSource as the software stack, VMWare has a more-or-less complete
cloud play, so it's surprising that they didn't push it harder in 2011; I suspect
they'll start cramming it down everybody's throats in 2012. Expect to see Rod Johnson
talking a lot about the cloud as a result.

NOW: Again, I give myself a "-1" here, and frankly, I'm shocked to
be doing it. I really thought this one was a no-brainer. CloudFoundry seemed like
a pretty straightforward play, and VMWare already owned a significant share of the
virtualization story, so.... And yet, I really haven't seen much by way of significant
marketing, advertising, or developer outreach around their cloud story. It's much
the same as what it was in 2011; it almost feels like the parent corporation (EMC)
either doesn't "get" why they should push a cloud play, doesn't see it as worth the
cost, or else doesn't care. Count me confused. "0"

THEN: JavaScript hype will continue to grow, and by years' end
will be at near-backlash levels.

JavaScript (more properly known as ECMAScript, not that anyone seems to care but me)
is gaining all kinds of steam as a mainstream development language (as opposed to
just-a-browser language), particularly with the release of NodeJS. That hype will
continue to escalate, and by the end of the year we may start to see a backlash against
it. (Speaking personally, NodeJS is an interesting solution, but suggesting that it
will replace your Tomcat or IIS server is a bit far-fetched; event-driven I/O is something
both of those servers have been doing for years, and the rest of it is "just" a language
discussion. We could pretty easily use JavaScript as the development language inside
both servers, as Sun demonstrated years ago with their "Phobos" project--not that
anybody really cared back then.)

NOW: JavaScript frameworks are exploding everywhere like fireworks
at a Disney theme park. Douglas Crockford is getting more invites to conference keynote
opportunities than James Gosling ever did. You can get a job if you know how to spell
"NodeJS". And yet, I'm starting to hear the same kinds of rumblings about "how in
the hell do we manage a 200K LOC codebase written in JavaScript" that I heard people
gripe about Ruby/Rails a few years ago. If the backlash hasn't started, then it's
right on the cusp. "+1"

THEN: NoSQL buzz will continue to grow, and by years' end will
start to generate a backlash.

More and more companies are jumping into NoSQL-based solutions, and this trend will
continue to accelerate, until some extremely public failure will start to generate
a backlash against it. (This seems to be a pattern that shows up with a lot of technologies,
so it seems entirely realistic that it'll happen here, too.) Mind you, I don't mean
to suggest that the backlash will be factual or correct--usually these sorts of things
come from misuing the tool, not from any intrinsic failure in it--but it'll generate
some bad press.

NOW: Recently, I heard that NBC was thinking about starting up a
new comedy series called "Everybody Hates Mongo", with Chris Rock narrating. And I
think that's just the beginning--lots of companies, particularly startups, decided
to run with a NoSQL solution before seriously contemplating how they were going to
make up for the things that a NoSQL doesn't provide (like a schema, for a lot of these),
and suddenly find themselves wishing they had spent a little more time thinking about
that back in the early days. Again, if the backlash isn't already started, it's about
to. "+1"

THEN: Ted will thoroughly rock the house during his CodeMash
keynote.

Yeah, OK, that's more of a fervent wish than a prediction, but hey, keep a positive
attitude and all that, right?

NOW: Welllll..... Looking back at it with almost a years' worth of
distance, I can freely admit I dropped a few too many "F"-bombs (a buddy of mine counted
18), but aside from a (very) vocal minority, my takeaway is that a lot of people enjoyed
it. Still, I do wish I'd throttled it back some--InfoQ recorded it, and the fact that
it hasn't yet seen public posting on the website implies (to me) that they found it
too much work to "bleep" out all the naughty words. Which I call "my bad" on, because
I think they were really hoping to use that as part of their promotional activities
(not that they needed it, selling out again in minutes). To all those who found it
distasteful, I apologize, and to those who chafe at the fact that I'm apologizing,
I apologize. I take a "-1" here.

2013 Predictions:

Having thus scored myself at a "9" (out of 17) for last year, let's take a stab at
a few for next year:

As always, folks, thanks for reading. See you next year.

UPDATE: Two things happened this week (7 Jan 2013) that made me want to add
to this list:




Enterprise consulting, mentoring or instruction. Java, C++, .NET or XML services.
1-day or multi-day workshops available. Contact
me for details [6].


Source URL: http://www.javaworld.com/community/node/8603

Links:
[1] http://blogs.tedneward.com/2012/01/02/Tech Predictions 2012 Edition.aspx
[2] http://www.usmicro.com/hot-offers.php
[3] http://www.tizen.org
[4] http://techcrunch.com/2013/01/07/ford-launches-open-developer-program-to-let-mobile-apps-interface-with-its-cars/
[5] http://developer.ford.com
[6] mailto:ted@tedneward.com