Software Development Predictions For 2009

snydeq writes "Fatal Exception's Neil McAllister lays out his development predictions for 2009. These include further struggles from Microsoft in retooling its image, a more open source mindset for Java, twilight for Sun, the Web as platform of choice, and a dearth of innovation due to dwindling economic prospects. 'When customers aren't buying, tool vendors don't innovate — so don't expect many groundbreaking new technologies to debut this year,' McAllister writes, adding that smart companies will realize that 'process automation is one of the best ways to reduce costs in any business,' making 2009 the ideal time to 'revisit old software schemes that got shelved back when staffing budgets were flush.'"

Comments

On the contrary

[A beautiful mind]

Historical trend shows that when the economy is in a recession/crisis/bad shape, that's when people turn towards the radically new. Sort of like a forest fire, it opens up opportunities for startups and new things.

Re:On the contrary

[ionix5891]

thats assuming the rotten trees get burned and leave space for fresh younglings

in our case the rotten trees got bailed out

2009

[mrthoughtful]

Hm. How about this:
(1) The majorty of humanity will carry on buying OEM MS operating systems
(2) Apple will produce something sleek, shiny, and expensive
(3) Linux users will think that 2009 will be when Linux will move (at last) into the mainstream userbase. They will be wrong.
(4) The majority of humanity will carry on using Internet Explorer, which will continue to annoy every web developer who doesn't have a MS qualification.
(5) Sun will trudge on.
(6) Cloud computing will still be used by academics and hackers.
(7) Java will continue to have it's mixture of fans and foes. But not much else.
(8) Same goes for BEA, etc.
(9) Innovation will happen in ways that you least expect.
(10) Oh - that year went by so fast.
(11) But now I am out of a job because the banks took my money and made a profit, then made a loss and took my money again.

Re:2009

[Eivind]

Probably most of these will be true, it's hardly surprising that mostly the world continues as it has.

The IE-thing though, I see sligthly differently. It's true that most people use IE. But it is also true that IE has seen a steady decline the last 2 years. Like you, I think the trends will continue much as they are, but that still means a continous downwards trend.

For the websites we run at work (I work for a web-development company that carries the websites of around 1500 norwegian companies, including a dozen of the larger ones) 2 years ago we saw 80% IE on average (more on grandma-type websites, less on technical ones), one year ago it was at about 73%, and now in december it was at 65%.

I don't care much about IE, but I do care about healthy competition. My ideal world would have no single browser above 50%. That's the best guarantee that people will not develop exclusively for ONE browser.

Re:2009

[wisty]

(12) Lispers will remain quietly smug. Except Paul Graham, who will be vocally smug.
(13) Pythoneers will remain vocally smug, except Guido who is busy doing real work.
(14) Open source software development remain 5 years ahead of Microsofts, except for the GUI, which lags by a decade.
(15) Someone will write a new distributed version control system.
(16) New web frameworks are written in Python (x3), Ruby (x2) and Cobol. Database work is still difficult.
(17) .net is upgraded to another version. Nobody had figured out what the previous version did.
(18) Scrum get's a new acronym, to the disgust of its advocates.
(19) Outside of a select few programmers and /.ers, nobody in the real world cares.