HW9: Reflections
11 Predictions for the future of programming by Saurabh is an interesting read I would like to offer my less experienced views on some of the predictions. Cloud Native as the new default, sure, everyone is going cloud but let’s also consider for a moment what not having control of our data does in highly sensitive environments. It opens up the risk of attacks or have none of these cloud company’s been subject to attacks from hackers? Also for a highly secretive organization such as a political campaign we wouldn’t necessarily trust our data to the cloud. A good DBA will never be replaced with the cloud no matter how good the programmer, just to illustrate some breaches into the cloud I am linking a blog with 7 high-profile intrusions including Apple, Microsoft, Dropbox, etc. https://blog.storagecraft.com/7-infamous-cloud-security-breaches/ I personally enjoy letting DBA’s manage the database and leave me to programming — I don’t necessarily want to do both.
Video content on the web will continue to dominate but as Saurabh mentions the codecs are becoming a lot more efficient. Just recently, for the first time in a while Netflix did not lead the internet in bandwith consumption. Some pointed out that was because competitors were doing a better job competing with Netflix but I disagree. Netflix has just gotten better at COmpressing-DECompressing (codecs) its streams as any technology company would want to due to costs associated with the transmission of data over the internet — who knows what kind of sophisticated AI they have implemented or other advanced algorithms. https://variety.com/2019/digital/news/netflix-loses-title-top-downstream-bandwidth-application-1203330313/
Consoles everywhere is the idea we need to program toasters to talk to our programmable smart refrigerators so that it knows to add bread to the shopping list because we’re toasting the last 4 pieces of bread from the basket. I personally do not enjoy this type of device intrusion. I don’t keep a network on at my home. But by and far people are buying into these devices like Alexa and Google hubs that can do everything from answer questions, to dim the lights and play music. There will be a greater inter-connectivity as we hurdle towards a future akin to the Jetsons.
Machine Learning is the hot topic of the day, well, if you don’t count data scientists, cybersecurity experts, cloud experts, etc. The point is specialization in any of these type of fields won’t ever be a negative for career growth for the aspiring computer programmer. I have to agree that machine learning on itself won’t ever grow to be a fully automated AI where it can program other programs with any type of accuracy nor success… at least not for the foreseeable future! I think what we’re finding out is that these technologies are being co-opted by rogue regimes in ways that really should cause pause to what we are exactly trying to achieve. As the recent drone attacks on Saudi Araibian oil refineries show, technology can be used by just about any thinking person to disastrous effects. As the pioneers of these type of emerging technologies it’s important to, as the author states, democratize how we move forward and not by affording every fool a vote but more like the programmers, scientists, engineers, professors, in short by bringing into the fold the relevant technologically (or even philosophically/sociologically!) informed people to debate these ideas. We don’t want this to be squirreled away at Apple AI headquarters in a nuclear proof bunker. I think we need to bring these things into the open and debate.
Finally to conclude with Open Source vs. Closed Development, this is maybe one of the greatest virtues of programming that we owe to people like Richard Stallman for his ingenious idea of the GNU licensing format and Linus Trovald with his continued Linux development. They’ve made it possible to envision a world where profit is not the sole motive but positive advancement is and will continue to be as more and more people pick up programming quite inexpensively thanks to all the good ethical programmers in the world.