Predictions for 2017

What will happen in the new year? Let's make some predictions!

Cloud computing and containers remain popular.

Ransomware will become more prevalent, with a few big name companies (and a number of smaller companies) suffering infections. Individuals will be affected as well. Companies may be spurred to improve their security; "traditional" malware was annoying but ransomware stops operations and costs actual money. Earlier virus programs would require effort from the support team to resolve, and that expense could be conveniently ignored by managers. But this new breed of malware requires an actual payment, and that is harder to ignore. I expect a louder cry for secure operating systems and applications, but effective changes will take time (years).

Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning will be discussed. A few big players will advertise projects. They will have little effect on "the little guy", small companies, and slow-moving organizations.

Apple will continue to lead the design for laptops and phones. Laptop computers from other manufacturers will lose DVD readers and switch to USB-C (following Apple's design for the MacBook). Apple itself will look for ways to distinguish its MacBooks from laptops.

Tablet sales will remain weak. We don't know what to do with tablets, at home or in the office. They fill a niche between phones and laptops, but if you have those two you don't need a tablet. If you have a phone and are considering an additional device, the laptop is the better choice. If you have a laptop and are considering an additional device, the phone is the better choice. Tablets offer no unique abilities.

Laptop sales will remain strong. Desktop sales will decline. There is little need for a tower PC, and the prices for laptops are in line with prices for desktops. Laptops offer portability, which is good for telework or group meetings. Tower PCs offer expansion slots, which are good for... um, very little in today's offices.

Tower PCs won't die. They will remain the PC of choice for games, and for specific applications that need the processing power of GPUs. Some manufacturers may drop the desktop configurations, and the remaining manufacturers will be able to raise prices. I won't guess at who will stay in the desktop market.

Amazon.com will grow cloud services but lose market share to Microsoft and Google, who will grow at faster rates. Several small cloud providers will cease operations. If you're using a small provider of cloud services, be prepared to move.

Programming languages will continue to fracture. (Witness the decline on http://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index/.) The long trend has been to move away from a few dominant languages and towards a collection of mildly popular languages. This change makes life uncomfortable for managers, because there is no one "safe" language that is "the best" for corporate development. But fear not, because...

Vendor relationships will continue to define the best programming languages for your projects: Java with Oracle, C# with Microsoft, Swift with Apple. If you are a Microsoft shop, your best language is C#. (You may consider F# for special projects.) If you are developing iOS applications, your best language is Swift. For Android apps, you want Java. Managers need not worry too much about difficult decisions for programming languages.

Those are my ideas for the new year. Let's see what really happens!