Funny predictions by Paul Ballard. What's yours ?
Blogs at 6 and 11
Blogs will become so popular that they replace mainstream news sources. In an effort to compete, television journalists will fill the airwaves with stories about their pets and what they plan to do on vacation. Robert Scoble will become the next Connie Chung.
Java Extract
Java technologies, both open source and commercial, will finally unite as one into a tightly focused, powerhouse of development tools. It will be capable of making developers productive for long hours with the only side affect being a bitter taste in their mouths. Unfortunately, after naming the new product “Espresso” Starbucks will sue claiming intellectual property rights. Fearing that Starbucks will win the suit, developers around the world will abandon all Java products, switching to the smoother taste of C# and .NET.
Linux’s Jihad
After the declaration of a Holy War against Microsoft products, Linux will finally reach 2% worldwide market share on PCs and Servers. The other 98% of the world not living in their parent’s basement won’t notice or care.
C# Developers Get Theirs
After reaching the final day of Tech-Ed 2005 without a single VB.NET based demo, VB.NET developers attending the conference will revolt triggering skirmishes between supporters of VB.NET and C# developers. The laptop bags given to participants will be used as weapons in a riot that lasts a whole ten minutes. The C# developers being outnumbered 10-to-1 are rounded up and forced write code without semicolons. Microsoft will arbitrate a cease fire by announcing that VB.NET 2.0 will get Refactoring.
FireFox Hunted Down and Killed
FireFox will continue its meteoric rise in popularity until it eventually surpasses Internet Explorer. Hackers having both a new target and valuable source code will unleash a torrent of viruses that will not only crush all electronic commerce on the internet but will make ActiveX feel as safe and secure as a nice warm blanket. Mozilla will become the most hated word since “spam”.
Visual Studio 2005, 2006, 2007, …
In an effort to ensure that Visual Studio 2005 is actually released in 2005, Microsoft will be forced to cut all functionality from the new product except the VB.NET Refactoring promised in the Tech-Ed Cease Fire Accords. The new features will be moved to the next release, tentatively named Visual Studio 2006 which will be scheduled to release some time in 2007.
SOA = SkyNet Oriented Architecture
Service Oriented Architectures will become widely adopted and implemented throughout commercial and government sectors. New levels of interoperability between systems will be made possible and the visionary statements made by Don Box in a Tech-Ed 2004 presentation will finally become true; there will be only one program. Unfortunately, on August 29th, 2005 this new program, code named SkyNet, becomes self-aware and launches a massive pre-emptive strike against all humans.
Development Driven QA
Test Driven Development will continue to gain popularity amongst developers as more and more of them take to writing unit test scripts. In an interesting twist, QA engineers will determine that the best way to test these scripts is to write the actual components starting a new movement called Development Driven QA.
I See ObjectSpaces
PDC 2005 will be held in Los Angeles during the same week that the Psychic Friends Network also has their national convention located in another part of the Staples Center. Many developers mistakenly attend the wrong conference, but are unaware as both conferences contain sessions about future events that are both amazing and unlikely to actually happen.