The New-ish Technologies That Will Alter Your Career

Nerval's Lobster writes Over at Dice, there's a discussion of the technologies that could actually alter how you work (and what you work on) over the next few years, including 3D printing, embedded systems, and evolving Web APIs. Granted, predicting the future with any accuracy is a nigh-impossible feat, and a lot of nascent technologies come with an accompanying amount of hype. But given how these listed technologies have actually been around in one form or another for years, and don't seem to be fading away, it seems likely that they'll prove an increasing factor in how we live and work over the next decade and beyond. For those who have no interest in mastering aspects of the so-called "Internet of Things," or other tech on this list, never fear: if the past two decades have taught us anything, it's that lots of old hardware and software never truly goes away, either (hi, mainframes!).

Comments

Shilling for dice.

[gstoddart]

And, here we go again, gratuitously shilling for dice.com.

No thanks.

Re:Shilling for dice.

[gstoddart]

Well, who else should/would they gratuitously shill for?

Bah, in all likelihood it's to an article on Dice.com which is just a summary of a well written article elsewhere.

I don't expect anything from Dice.com to give me first-hand insights on anything, just whatever their advertisers and executives want to hawk this week.

Sorry, but Slashdot has gone downhill since Dice.com, and many of us will point that out at every chance we get.

Re:Shilling for dice.

[halivar]

"Over and Dice" are the only words I dread more on Slashdot than "Frequent contributor Bennet Haselton writes". Dear lord, I miss the Slashdot of 1999, even with all its problems.

Re:Shilling for dice.

[i kan reed]

What on earth could a PHB possibly think to do with a 3d printer inside a white collar organization?

That particular one won't even make it to IT buzzword.

Embedded systems, on the other hand, I can see infesting places they don't belong as a result.

"Why don't we deploy our lightweight Web API to an embedded server to decrease energy costs?" on the other hand is the kinda phrase you can just cringe at.

I liked the original title better

[netsavior]

"5 Meaningless buzzwords not worth your time"

Yeah yeah these things exist... and have existed for decades.

Re:I liked the original title better

[vtcodger]

Pretty much :

Internet of Things: The strange idea that my internet connected refrigerator is going to engage in long philosophical discussions with a laundromat in Tashkent and that I will somehow benefit from the discourse. (And that my fridge will not be defrosted by a sociopathic twelve year old in Capetown). Certainly some factory applications will work out. But life changing? My bet is not. (And if I have my way, my ap[pliances aren't going to have an internet connection anyway.)

Parallel Programming: I dunno about the rest of you folks, but I HATE debugging race conditions. There are some applications where parallel programming is a great idea. But mostly, as was pointed out decades ago by I forget who, any advantage gained from multiple CPUs is likely to be lost in expanded interprocess communication and waiting for locks to clear.

3D printing: Seems like it HAS to be good for something. But other than prototyping and maybe some appliance repair where shape is more important than material characteristics, it's hard to see what.

Web APIs: Yechhh. With the best of intentions we've created a monster by allowing everyone to do pretty much whatever they damn well please. Your basic tower of Babel. Yes, there will be careers based on trying to work with this stuff. But I think cleaning septic tanks might be more fun.

Embedded Systems: Fun as a hobby. Will probably be the basis of some really mind-boggling science fair projects. I expect a few folks will somehow create genuinely useful devices and may even profit thereby. But mostly I suspect we're going to end up with uncounted digital nutcrakers and similar pointless stuff.

Re:I liked the original title better

[flopsquad]

"5 Meaningless buzzwords not worth your time"

No, no, no, you'll never be a true Dice webditor with a headline like that. Try something like, "Which 5 Meaningless Buzzwords Are Least Worth Your Time??" or "5 Words That Give Kim Kardashian a Meaningless Buzz!"

Bonus points for correctly identifying embedded systems as a "weird old tip."

Some technologies I worry about...

[mlts]

In IT, there isn't really much that is new. Cloud systems evolved from offsite data centers. However, there are a few things which are important:

1: IoT. Securing these is like trying to use bandaids after someone stood in front of a 3000 rpm gunship weapon. However, if it does take off, one will have to factor in every doodad that might require Wi-Fi, or might have a 3G card so it can phone home and the black hats can hack into it.

2: Separation of the Internet into sub-networks. It is only a matter of time before this happens. With the state-sponsored armies of blackhats, you can't win a war of defense. The only real way to keep your stuff secure (as a business) is to separate out functions with physically different networks (SIPRNet, NIPRnet are examples), so the Internet is not the only means of communication. This involves real leased lines, additional fiber laid, and additional network fabric, perhaps virtual circuits, so only machines that are configured to communicate with each other can.

3: Bit rot, CAS systems, and ensuring files archived are still readable in a media-agnostic way. That way, if finance needs a document from 2005, it doesn't matter if it is on tape or disk, they can obtain it with minimal operator intervention.

Re:Some technologies I worry about...

[Aighearach]

"Cloud" deployment isn't new because the technology is new, it is new because the billing systems are relatively new. The fine-grained billing allows the technology to be utilized much more broadly than before, and to much greater effect. Also the almost guaranteed instant availability of additional compute units is a big difference compared to the old offsite data center, where you had to lease greater-than-expected-peak capacity. With "the cloud" if you have variable traffic during different parts of the day, it is often cheaper than hosting your own hardware, even if you have latent admin capacity and only pay for the hardware, power, and connectivity. Even just the peak+ connectivity could cost more than the whole cloud hosting, depending on traffic pattern. It also brings a new level of scaling capability to small business that was just not feasible before without hiring multiple 6-figure IT guys full time.

So Wait

[Anrego]

This is a two person operation?

Nerval's Lobster works for slashdot, and from his comment history, his entire job is to submit dice.com stories (this is not an exaggeration, as was pointed out to me, go look, it's literally nothing but dice.com posts).

However, he can't actually directly post the articles? So he is literally paid to _submit_ articles to slashdot, but can't directly post them himself? Isn't that a little silly?

Re:So Wait

[gstoddart]

See, any legitimate news organization would have to give a disclaimer about the relationship.

So, one of two things is happening:

Either Nerval's Lobster is purely created to make it look like someone is posting stuff. We'll call that astroturfing.

Or, option B, whatever this poor sod submits, some asshat changes to point to a dice.com clone of the article. We'll call that shilling.

And, yes, I can't see a single story posted by Nerval's Lobster which doesn't point to dice.

So I'm afraid we have to go with astroturfing and blatant shilling.

Thanks for pointing that out, now I can ignore crap from this poster as well the shit from Bennett fuck-me-in-the-ass Haselton.

2 Comments

[Ashenkase]

Over at Dice, there's a discussion

No, there is a cheesy article with 2 comments. 2 comments does not a "discussion" make.

Quantum Computing

[RockGrumbler]

Quantum computing is the only thing I could imagine altering software development drastically.

Dice

[DoofusOfDeath]

Over at Dice, there's a discussion

Hell, that's s reason for us not to follow the discussion. Seriously.

Dice-related posts are like diversity hires. They may be good, but people are assuming that they weren't picked for their quality.

Brilliant strategy..

[Junta]

It's like predicting how these 'automobiles' will be a big part of our lives (news is 100 years too late, but at least accurate). Predicting the future by simply stating the present, brilliant!

Thank you for your attention.

[fyngyrz]

What on earth could a PHB possibly think to do with a 3d printer inside a white collar organization?

[background music] "I'd like to extend a surmise for instantiation of surface-approximate prototypical hands-on pass-arounds in order to provide in-house guidance, as well as a vector for social media sharing utilizing a cloud-resident archival basis. [slide] Moving forward, this will provide seamless integration, representing a pro-active new paradigm that is win-win at the end of the day. [slide] I believe it’s time to synchronize the tactility scale. [slide] As a marketing manager, how do you resolve 110% of rendered graphics material with exertion levels of 130% developed by actual instantiation? [4k resolution animation of hotties fondling 3-D printed prototype suggestively] Unquestionably, pre-OOBE hands-on for our gurus and rock-stars will provide the synergy required for seamlessly moving from concept to actuation. [slide] [credits] Thank you. [corporate logo] [music fade]"

Knuth and Abstraction

[fyngyrz]

Why didn't Knuth ever think of that!?

Perhaps he was too busy inflicting TeX on us?

Many others there

[Champaklal]

Many other things which would change how we'd be living, not mentioned in article:

• 1. Machine Learning: machines now learn to do magic tricks, phones would soon learn what you read and adjust according to it. Spy bots, which would work on ant colony optimizations. unmanned war machines.
• 2. Extraterrestrial habitats - on mars and other planets
• 3. Habitats on water - cities floating on oceans
• 4. materials which can change shape on their own - without mechanical devices - because of their own crystal lattice structures
• 5. Collective Intelligence - ask questions, get answers in almost / actual realtime with information of humanity collected in a huge corpus.
• 6. Solar energy - next thing which would render the powerhouses useless

I think the article was a sensationalist clickbait.