Predictions for 2011

Happy New Year!

The turning of the year provides a time to pause, look back, and look ahead. Looking ahead can be the most fun, since we can make predictions.

Here are my predictions for computing in the coming year:

Tech that is no longer new

Virtualization will drop from the radar. Virtualization for servers is no longer exciting -- some might say that is is "old hat". Virtualization for the desktop is "not quite fully baked". I expect modest interest in virtualization, driven by promises of cost reductions, but no major announcements.

Social networks in the enterprise are also "not quite fully baked", but here the problem is with the enterprise and its ability to use them. Enterprises are built on command-and-control models and don't expect individuals to comment on each other's projects. When enterprises shift to results-oriented models, enterprise social networks will take off. But this is a change in psychology, not technology.

Multiple Ecosystems

The technologies associated with programming are a large set, and not a single bunch. Programmers seem to enjoy "language wars" (C# or C++? Java or Visual Basic? Python or Ruby?) and the heated debates continue in 2011. But beyond languages, the core technologies are bunched: Microsoft has its "stack" of Windows, .NET, C#, and SQL Server; Oracle with its purchase of Sun has Solaris, JVM, Java, Oracle DB, and MySQL; and so forth.

We'll continue to see the fracturing of the development world. The big camps are Microsoft, Oracle, Apple, Google, and open source. Each has their own technology set and the tools cross camps poorly, and I expect the different ecosystems will continue to diverge. Since each technology set is too large for a single person to learn, individuals must pick a camp as their primary skill area and forgo other camps. Look to see experts in one environment (or possibly two) but not all.

Companies will find that they are consolidating their systems into one of the big five ecosystems. They will build new systems in the new technology, and convert their old systems into the new technology. Microsoft shops will convert Java systems to C#, Oracle shops will convert Visual Basic apps to Java, and everyone will want to convert their old C++ systems to something else. (Interestingly, C++ was the one technology that spanned all camps, and it is being abandoned or at least deprecated by employers and practitioners.)

Microsoft will keep .NET and C#, and continue to "netify" its offerings. Learning from Apple, it will shift away from web applications in a browser to internet applications that run locally and connect through the network. Look for more "native apps" and fewer "web apps".

Apple will continue to thrive in the consumer space, with new versions of iPads, iPods, and iPhones. The big hole in their tech stack is the development platform, which compiles to the bare processor and not to a virtual machine. Microsoft uses .NET, Oracle uses JVM, and the open source favorites Perl, Python, and Ruby also use interpreters and virtual machines.

Virtual processors provide three advantages: 1) superior development tools, 2) improved security, and 3) independence from physical processors. Apple needs this independence; look for a new development platform for all of their devices (iPhone, iPad, iPod, and Mac). This new platform will require a relearning of development techniques, and may possibly use a new programming language.

Google has always lived in the net and does not need to "netify" its offerings. Unlike Microsoft, it will stay in the web world (that is, inside a browser). I expect modest improvements to things such as Google Search, Google Docs, and Google Chrome, and major improvements to Google cloud services such as the Google App Engine.

The open source "rebel alliance" will continue to be a gadfly with lots of followers but little commercial clout. Linux will be useful in the data center but it will not take over the desktop. Perl will continue its slow decline; Python, Ruby, and PHP will gain. Open source products such as Open Office may get a boost from the current difficult economic times.

Staffing

Companies will have a difficult time finding the right people. They will find lots of the "not quite right" people. When they find "the right person", that right person may want to work from home. Companies will have four options:

1) Adjust policies and allow employees to work from home or alternate locations. This will require revision to management practices, since one must evaluate on delivered goods and not on appearance and arrival time.

2) Keep the traditional management policies and practices and accept "not quite right" folks for the job.

3) Expand the role of off-site contractors. Companies that use off-site contractors but insist that employees show up to the office every day and attend Weekly Status Meetings of Doom will be in a difficult situation: How to justify the "work in the office every day" policy when contractors are not in the office?

4) Defer hiring.

How companies deal with staffing in an up market, after so many years of down markets, will be interesting and possibly entertaining.

New tech

Cloud computing will receive modest interest from established shops, but it will take a while longer for those shops to figure out how to use it. More interest will come from startups. The benefits of cloud computing, much like the PC revolution of the early 1980s, will be in new applications, not in improving existing applications.

We will see an interest in functional programming languages. I dislike the term "functional" since all programming languages let you define functions and are functional in the sense that they perform, but the language geeks have their reason for the term and we're stuck with it. The bottom line: Languages such as Haskell, Erlang, and even Microsoft's F# will tick up on the radar, modestly. The lead geeks are looking into these languages, just as they looked into C++ in the mid 1980s.

The cloud suppliers will be interested in functional programming. Functional languages are a better fit in the cloud, where processes can be shuffled from one processor to another. C# and Java can be used for cloud applications, but such efforts require a lot more discipline and careful planning.

Just as C++ was a big jump up from C and Pascal, functional languages are a big jump up from C++, Java, and C#. Programming in a functional language (Haskell, Erlang, or F#) requires a lot of up-front analysis and thought.

The transition from C to C++ was driven by Windows and its event-driven model. The transition from object-oriented to functional programming will be driven by the cloud and its new model. The shift to functional languages will take time, possibly decades. Complicating the transition will be the poor state of object-oriented programming. Functional programming assumes good-to-excellent knowledge of object-oriented programming, and a lot of shops use object-oriented languages but not rigorously. These shops will have to improve their skills in object-oriented programming before attempting the move to functional programming.

These are my predictions for the coming year. I've left out quite a few technologies, including:

Ruby on Rails
Silverlight
Windows Phone 7
NoSQL databases
Perl 6
Microsoft's platforms (WPF, WWF, WCF, and whatever they have introduced since I started writing this post)
Google's "Go" language
Android phones
Salesforce.com's cloud platform

There is a lot of technology out there! Too much to cover in a single post. I've picked those items that I think will be the big shakers. Let's see how well I do! We can check in twelve months.