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Ask Slashdot: How Will You Be Programming In a Decade? (cheney.net)

Posted by Soulskill on from the probably-the-same-but-with-carpal-tunnel dept.

An anonymous reader writes: Programmer Dave Cheney raised an interesting question today: How will you be programming in a decade? If you look back to a decade ago, you can see some huge shifts in the software industry. This includes the rise of smartphones, ubiquitous cloud infrastructure, and containers. We've also seen an explosion of special-purpose libraries and environments, many with an emphasis on networking and scaling. At the same time, we still have a ton of people writing Java and C and Python. Some programmers have jumped headfirst into new tools like Light Table, while others are still quite happy with Emacs. So, programmers of Slashdot, I ask you: How do you think your work (or play) will change in the next ten years?

3 of 279 comments (clear)

  1. I plan on ossifying by halivar · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Learning new languages every six months in a young man's game. As I get older, I will gravitate towards jobs where I can leverage 15+ years experience in a language to get better-paying positions.

    1. Re:I plan on ossifying by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Easy enough to move from language to language, but toolstack to toolstack less so. If you've used c++ you can "learn java" very quickly, but learning the increasingly complex libraries and frameworks that tend to accompany it can take awhile. Even if you've worked with similar tools, it can take awhile to learn all the best practices and shortcuts and little nuances.

      It even extends beyond programming itself. Methodologies change and the toolstack used to implement those methodologies changes with them. We've generally migrated from bug trackers (bugzilla, mantis, etc) to project trackers (trac, redmine), and chances are in a few years we'll be doing something else.

      People joke about old men stuck in their way, but as I get older I kinda get it. After a few iterations my enthusiasm to learn the next greatest thing has waned, and it feels like something I have to do rather than something I want to do, and the gain starts to feel less worth it. Is gradle really that much better than maven? Was maven really that much better than ant+ivy? Once I become a gradle guru, something is just gonna come up and replace it as the defacto, so why even bother?

      The only solution is to become a manager and become the roadblock we all hated when we first started.

  2. Re:10 Years [damned UI's] by Tablizer · · Score: 4, Insightful

    You are behind, dude, Cherry MX Periwinkle Switches Reloaded++ is now out.

    Seriously, who the hell knows what's 10 years down the road. The industry is driven as much by fads as logic, if not more.

    I just hope the UI side simplifies so that one doesn't have to say diddle with the minutia of scroll-bar coordinates for everyday GUI idioms and bread-and-butter CRUD. I'd like to focus on domain logic rather than micromanage UI glitches all day.

    UI's are f8cking mess unless you target a specific browser brand and version. We devolved from the desktop days. I pray the industry cleans up the UI mess created by the browser. Unfortunately the industry seems to be chasing eye candy fads instead instead of practical things, but I guess the money is in hype and flash.

    In summary, get off my UI lawn!

    --
    Table-ized A.I.