18 ms·

IsaacL nailed it the best https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1027093 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1027093 And surprisingly the WoW one is the most o

• 11thEarlOfMar 7y ago
  I thought ericb did very well: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1025787 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1025787 "not [electronically] tracking your kids will be considered somewhat negligent"
  • dnautics 7y ago
    we're not really quite there yet. Give another 10 years.
    • onefuncman 7y ago
      are you saying you have a child with a cell phone or tablet that has location services explicitly turned off ? i dunno, seems negligent to me
      • switch007 7y ago
        If you're tracking them, so are other people. (Though, as we all know, the real, proper privacy fix is not having a phone.)
        • Dravorek 7y ago
          "The only thing that can stop a bad guy with your kids position data is a good guy with your kids position data" :P
      • arpa 7y ago
        Hey, does your child have rfid implant for easy id and tracking?
• king_magic 7y ago
  I think the Microsoft prediction is even more off...
  • jbigelow76 7y ago
    My gut response to his thought of MS pivoting to consulting a la IBM was way off but after thinking about it for a minute you could kind of make a case that Azure is a form of "self-serve operationalized consulting", he was just off on it's impact and success by a factor of 50 or 100.
    • kortilla 7y ago
      Well then every SaaS is just consulting. That’s pretty pointless then.
    • freehunter 7y ago
      I heard someone recently describe the value proposition of enterprise cloud like IBM and Azure as “not having to talk to a sales guy as a service”.
  • asveikau 7y ago
    There was one comment in the thread about what Steve Jobs will do at the end of the decade. As a ghost I suppose? (Another says he will step down due to his health, which is closer.) My favorite is the joke that Zuck will buy Portugal.
    • xixixao 7y ago
      Jobs was alive in 2010.
      • asveikau 7y ago
        Yes I know. As in the saying. Hindsight is 20/20.
    • daveFNbuck 7y ago
• russfink 7y ago
  Also jacquesm on Jan 1, 2010 [-] ... > if there is a way to work Elon Musk in there somewhere that would be good, I have a feeling he's going to make some big waves in the next 10 years but I haven't a clue how.
• yuy910616 7y ago
  these time travelers are getting cocky
• darzu 7y ago
  > - The next big thing will be something totally unknown and unpredictable now, as user-generated content and social networking were in 1999. However, when it does appear, various 'experts' on it will spring from nowhere to lecture us all about it. It will still be really cool, though. I think this basically describes AI.
  • soneca 7y ago
    No, definitely Bitcoin
    • joeyspn 7y ago
      Agree, particularly this bit describes the blockchain hype... > "various 'experts' on it will spring from nowhere to lecture us all about it"
    • leoc 7y ago
      I suppose that partly depends on exactly how novel the blockchain part is, but broadly speaking the world of efforts to combine some of electronic money, cryptography, proof of work and decentralisation was not a new one in the late 2000s. For example Ecash had been hot once https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecash https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecash , while later on Hashcash got a fair bit of attention as a possible solution to the spam crisis. In 2007 (early 2010 is another story) it was definitely more of a deep cut than AI or cloud, though.
      • jaggirs 7y ago
        AI was hot too before winter came
    • maxerickson 7y ago
      Bitcoin isn't really all that cool though. It replaces trust with massive resource consumption and doesn't do a good job of being digital money (it is hard to use safely, it is hard to use anonymously).
      • 7y ago
• hyperpape 7y ago
  The dynamic languages slower than ruby prediction didn't hold up either. The past ten years have just seen nibbling around the edges for dynamic languages, without any compelling ideas about how to make them fundamentally more expressive.
  • wycy 7y ago
    Doesn’t that describe the rise of JavaScript? I haven’t done or seen any specific benchmarks, but I gathered that JS was among the slowest of languages.
    • ratww 7y ago
      No, it's pretty fast [1]. Chrome and V8 were released in 2008, and Node.js (which leverages V8) in 2009. V8 was already considered fast back then. Mozilla and Apple also focused on optimizing their JS stack in the following years. [1] I'm not a fan of linking to benchmarks, but that's the best I can do: https://benchmarksgame-team.pages.debian.net/benchmarksgame/fastest/node-yarv.html https://benchmarksgame-team.pages.debian.net/benchmarksgame/... / https://benchmarksgame-team.pages.debian.net/benchmarksgame/fastest/javascript.html https://benchmarksgame-team.pages.debian.net/benchmarksgame/...
      • mattmanser 7y ago
        No, it really wasn't. You had to use it in really specific ways and it had all sorts of gotchas. One I vaguely remember is that if an array got too big performance would tank like crazy.
      • jashmatthews 7y ago
        Google’s marketing for Chrome and V8 was incredibly effective. We’ve basically forgotten that Mozilla, Adobe and Apple were pushing JS perf long before V8 was released. Memory usage of early V8 was atrocious and real world performance was barely improved over Safari and Firefox but Google dominated dev mindshare for a decade.
        • 7y ago
• pakitan 7y ago
  Half of those predictions read like "the thing that is a trend now, will continue to be a trend". I can be a prophet too - Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple and Microsoft are not going to be displaced in the next decade.
  • icebraining 7y ago
    > Half of those predictions read like "the thing that is a trend now, will continue to be a trend" And yet, people regularly think "a decade is a long time, surely this trend will be finished by then". Recognizing that existing trends are still likely valid is worthwhile.
    • goatlover 7y ago
      Just wait until we hit the 2040s and get to compare Kurzweil’s predictions.
• maerF0x0 7y ago
  - As Moore's Law marches on, dynamic languages that are even slower than Ruby are likely to catch on. They may be to Ruby what Ruby is to Java, trading even more programmer time for CPU time. I dont think this happened?
  • deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  • mattmanser 7y ago
    You could argue that it's JavaScript. JavaScript had terrible performance even in 2008, can't remember now what it was like by 2010, but I would guess V8 was still pretty lacklustre back then.
    • randomdata 7y ago
      I read it such that if, for arguments's sake, Ruby is 10 times slower than Java that people would start using a new language that is 10 times slower than Ruby. I'm not sure that ever described Javascript, and it certainly didn't as the decade progressed with the advancements that have been made in executing it. I feel like that one simply missed the mark. If anything, there was greater emphasis towards languages that were more performant, even if less productive for banging out a working product.
      • mattmanser 7y ago
        It definitely did. IE6's JavaScript was super slow. You cannot even imagine how slow it was if you never worked in it. Remember, IE6 was the dominate browser for years, so very slow JavaScript was the norm. For example round about 2008 I made a client-side pivot table for a web app, tried it in JavaScript first, even trivial tables would take 10 seconds despite all the optimization I tried (in IE6, IE7 + Firefox). I rewrote it using XML + XSLT and it was instant. But it was truly gnarly code.
    • flir 7y ago
      I think the point of the prediction is that the new, slower language would be more expressive. More natural-language-like. That doesn't describe JS.
• TulliusCicero 7y ago
  > - As Moore's Law marches on, dynamic languages that are even slower than Ruby are likely to catch on. They may be to Ruby what Ruby is to Java, trading even more programmer time for CPU time. Interesting how plausible this one is, yet turned out to be terribly wrong: the newer hyped languages that got some uptake were largely compiled ones like Swift, Rust, Kotlin, and Dart.
  • mminer237 7y ago
    I mean, JavaScript and Python have definitely become much more popular for many more things than they were in 2010. I doubt Swift replaced much besides other compiled languages, and Kotlin just compiles to Java anyway. Dart's VM idea was dropped so its small usage is largely compiling to JS still. I would say that the overall idea of performance being traded for programmer time is definitely happening despite the emergence of Rust.
    • CoolGuySteve 7y ago
      In terms of language design, it seems like swift and julia are the most forward looking. I personally don't think swift will ever escape the Mac ecosystem, just like Objective-C never did, but something with the same DNA will. In the same way that Objective-C and Ruby both implement the philosophy of Smalltalk, I think that philosophy has yet to be fleshed out in a simple syntax that is natively jit'ed/compiled. The same goes for julia as an answer to R/pandas.
    • heavyset_go 7y ago
      > Dart's VM idea was dropped so its small usage is largely compiling to JS still. Are you sure about this? I was under the impression that today's Flutter development is highly dependent on the niceties the Dart VM provides, and newer Dart releases improved upon them.
    • deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    • jlarocco 7y ago
      > I would say that the overall idea of performance being traded for programmer time is definitely happening despite the emergence of Rust. In some sense Rust is in that same vain - reducing certain errors and the need for tools like Coverity, which in turn makes programmers more efficient.
• gilbetron 7y ago
  That was shockingly accurate, really. Thanks for linking it. Who is this IsaacL and which year did he come from? ;)
• freedomben 7y ago
  IsaacL, if you're still around, you should make predictions for stuff by 2030!
  • eitland 7y ago
    IsaacL is still around it seems:https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=IsaacL https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=IsaacL
  • newguy1234 7y ago
    This is why I like to stick around HN and just read. The minds here seem to be much more brilliant compared to other parts of the web. That dude nailed it!
• eric-hu 7y ago
  > - China will not become a democracy, or even make moves in that direction. However the rule of law will strengthen, and some civil liberties will increase. The latter half of this one didn't come to be. Rule of law is weaker and civil liberties have declined.
  • michaelkeenan 7y ago
    According to the World Bank's metric, China's percentile ranking on rule of law improved somewhat from 2010 to 2018 (eyeballing the chart, looks like it moved from 40th to 48th). This is of course not quite the same thing as an absolute increase in rule of law; if rule of law is worsening everywhere, then the ranking change could still be a decrease (though globally worse rule of law isn't my impression). https://info.worldbank.org/governance/wgi/Home/Reports https://info.worldbank.org/governance/wgi/Home/Reports
  • Aperocky 7y ago
    Civil liberty and rule of law are orthogonal mostly. China has used a decade to make most court cases publicly accessible through internet, all corporation and their holding/debt status similarly accessible, a host of other governmental information available. While there are still a significant amount of corruption, the law enforcement would have been at most transparent in history. Civil Liberty is on a different track however, with laws obstructing such being enforced.
    • TheKarateKid 7y ago
      And you actually believe the accuracy of those published documents?
      • Aperocky 7y ago
        Yes. Most of these are not related to politics at all, 99.9% of cases in China is the same as the west, traffic, violence, contract breach etc.
    • simonh 7y ago
• c3534l 7y ago
  If 6 out of 17 predictions correct with the only unambiguously correct predictions being trivial or vague is "nailing it," then I probably won't be taking stock advice from you any time soon. On the other hand, predicting the future is kind of hard. IsaacL made some really conservative predictions, sticking to things that seemed obvious. In fact, most of the wrong ones would be perfectly reasonable predictions for the next 10 years. It just goes to show how hard making predictions really is. Below is how I calculated 6 out of 17 predictions correct --- > Facebook will not be displaced by another social network. It will IPO some time in the next two years. Correct > Twitter will become profitable, but not as much as some expect. It will be less profitable than Facebook, and may sell to another company. Correct (profitable since last year) > Microsoft will .. have shrunk and may have evolved into a consultancy company on the lines of IBM Wrong > Internet Explorer will shrink, but won't go away Correct? (debatable, since software never completely goes away, but MS is no longer developing it and Edge doesn't use the same rendering engine) > Chrome OS or a similar operating system that relies on web access may grow extremely slowly at first, before rapidly gaining share amongst certain market segments. It will be most successful in places like cities that grant free municipial wifi access. Wrong > Mobile phones won't replace computers, but increasing penetration amongst the poorest in developing countries, and increasingly capable handsets in developed countries (and developing countries) will make them a colossal juggernaut. Many of the really big changes, especially social changes, will be caused by mobiles. This was already true in 2010, so it doesn't even count. > For any definition of 'success', there will be more tech startups reaching that level in the 2010s than in the 2000s. For example, there will be more than four startups of Youtube/Facebook/Twitter/Zynga proportions. Wrong. > In addition, at least one of the 'big' startups of the second half of the decade will have been possible with 2009 technology. By this I mean that people will still be discovering new potential for browser-based web applications built with current client-side technologies, which will remain ubiquitous, although new alternatives will appear. Correct, but the predication that there will be at least one new web-based startup is not very interesting. > It will be an even better time to start a startup in 2020 than it is now. One of the key drivers of ease-of-starting-up-ness will not be new technology, but new platforms - like Facebook and viral marketing, but better; or that solve other problems like micropayments, customer development, retention, and so on. Wrong. > Hence, starting up will become a more attractive career option, though well-meaning family will still say "at least finish your degree first". Wrong. > As Moore's Law marches on, dynamic languages that are even slower than Ruby are likely to catch on. They may be to Ruby what Ruby is to Java, trading even more programmer time for CPU time. Wrong. > Having said that, Moore's law will at least hiccup and may stop altogether in the middle of the decade, as semiconductor feature widths drop below 11nm. Since this will likely encourage investment in quantum computing and nanotechnology, by 2020 we might be seeing something faster than Moore's Law. Wrong, IMO (transistors are still on the curve, but the performance impact of adding more transistors doesn't matter the same way it used to; but he cited Moore's Law specifically, so he's wrong). > An international deal, of the kind that was aimed for at Copenhagen, will be reached over the next five years, though it might not be far-reaching enough to limit warming to 2 degrees in the long-term. (Despite the failure of the Copenhagen talks, it appears that world leaders almost universally recognize the need to take action over man-made climate change, though the various political problems will remain hard problems). China may not be part of such a deal, though the US likely will. Environmental disasters will begin to increase through the decade, as will disasters that are probably not caused by anthropogenic global warming but will be blamed by it anyway; this will provoke more of a push for action. Wrong. > Increasing fuel prices, and green taxes or incentives, will mean large shops will begin to replaced by warehouses, as traditional retail gives way to home delivery. Wrong, but only because he cited a reason. Otherwise, the prediction that brick-and-mortar stores will continue to be replaced would have been correct. > China will not become a democracy, or even make moves in that direction. However the rule of law will strengthen, and some civil liberties will increase. Internet crackdowns will continue, and may increase in severity, and will still be rationalized by porn. I want to say the civil liberties situation in China is the same, but I don't know enough about China to comment on it. > Despite multiple new fads that purport to make software development ten times faster and error-free, it will remain a hard problem. Correct, but trivial. Of course writing better software is hard. > You still won't be able to talk to your fridge, and gesture-based HCI will remain a fun gimmick. I'm counting this as wrong because of Alexa. > Virtual worlds like Second Life will remain niche, but World of Warcraft will pass 20 million users and a Facebook game or similar will pass 200 million users. Wrong. > The next big thing will be something totally unknown and unpredictable now, as user-generated content and social networking were in 1999. However, when it does appear, various 'experts' on it will spring from nowhere to lecture us all about it. It will still be really cool, though. Wrong, but maybe I'm forgetting about some big tech thing in the 2010s. It seems that the biggest disprupters was a modernization of cab companies and hotel bookings. We may be on the dawn of several actually unpredicted new things, like driverless cars and the use of neural networks for some kind of cool new applications, but there's been no killer app. These are hopefuls on the horizon, not profitable products and industries.
• namelosw 7y ago
  And even more surprisingly, WoW in 2019 released an 2006 version :D
• philplckthun 7y ago
  > Now that Google is advertising Chrome on billboards here in the UK, all that can be safely predicted about the browser market is that it'll be extremely competitive. It's rather interesting to see how the web went from IE dominating, to Chrome doing essentially the same. Looks like predicting such a growth was farfetched. Funny to see that the prediction of IE sticking around was mostly right. I long for the day that IE11 will mostly be gone.
  • jnwatson 7y ago
    Internet Explorer 6 could have been the dominant browser essentially forever if Microsoft hadn’t zeroed its investment into it. Its incentives weren’t aligned with a robust web platform. Google’s incentives are definitely aligned for Chrome to dominate.
• joeyspn 7y ago
  Yes, pretty close... too bad we can't comment on old threads but at least I upvoted him =)
• areis 7y ago
  Fair, but OP (DanielBMarkham) was only 2 days off on his prediction that "major changes will happen in Iran."
  • chx 7y ago
    The way he phrased pointed to an internal change, not something like this.
    • freehunter 7y ago
      I remember Iran had very large scale protests in 2009 leading into 2010, so that was probably on their mind, thinking it would lead to some kind of radical change.
    • deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
• everdev 7y ago
  > IsaacL nailed it the best Curious if the "wisdom of crowds" works with these future predictions or if only a few were on target.
• thirtyseven 7y ago
  > IE6 will hang around for a few years, but may die very rapidly in workplaces when some killer enterprise web application stops supporting it. Turns out the “killer enterprise web application” was YouTube :) https://blog.chriszacharias.com/a-conspiracy-to-kill-ie6 https://blog.chriszacharias.com/a-conspiracy-to-kill-ie6
  • glaberficken 7y ago
    In my experience (very large contact center multinational), what killed IE6 in the enterprise was PCI and other security compliance standards. Large companies do whatever it takes to stay compliant to a lot of these standards because having that "stamp of approval" is the only way to keep other equally large companies as clients.
• Apofis 7y ago
  - You still won't be able to talk to your fridge This is wrong too.
• AlchemistCamp 7y ago
  It's interesting that it's so far down the page, too. Popularity and accuracy were inversely correlated from my reading of that thread.