Ask HN: Predictions for 2020? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Predictions for 2020?

4 pointsjoddystreet6 comments

Field/Industry: Software -

- no code hype to continue

- software companies labelling themselves as - “superhuman for X” (whatever that means)

- more open source products (not just libs or frameworks, but full fledged products)

- more companies opting for in-house development

- fight for privacy is going to continue, but it’s all going to be in vain

- decentralised internet, software would continue to be a toy

- in programming language- Python, JS, Golang would continue their upward trends. Rust and wasm ecosystem to grow.

- Remote teams trend to continue

- SaaS offerings would grow more vertical (see “superh... X”)

- I don’t think SaaS consolidation is going to happen (have read a lot of predictions about this)

Opinion- Experienced developers, that side project you always wanted to start, now would be a great time to do that , or switch to engineering management.

Overall it’s going to be a great time for the MBAs and not so exciting time for the techies working in non-core-CS industry (a suggestion to techies - go watch uncle bob’s - future of programming and let’s start bringing some fundamental changes to our profession).

More people will move towards smaller silos of 'social media' like a discord, telegram or reddit group.

More ridiculous regulations incoming.

Geo politics tension will increase.

Space war 2020? hah. But really, I feel like this will be the decade for another breakthrough given the commercial as well as government interest in space.

More vegetarians will emerge out of their shed than before.

Unicorns will stop appearing as frequently as they did in the past decade.

Crypto currencies will skyrocket again. The bubble and interest will grow towards the end or during the middle.

There will be more articles mentioning Google employees than there were this year on HN.

Lot of old 'boring' tech will emerge as new solution in a repackaged branding.

Have you heard of human interface design principles? Yes they will be applied and we will find that ads are intrusive and do not adhere to any of it so we will have companies emerging with 'organic advertising' which is done by some kind of ml bot using GPT or other text generation model with the pretense of using humans or generate ads on the fly personalized only for you that checks for your emotional state at that time. (too cynical, I know)

Similarly, marketers and companies will use AI as an excuse to sell you things for cheaper/more. Like put things designed by a GAN next to human stuff with later priced at 5x or 10x. Emotionally exploiting you while reaching everyone equally - rich, poor or middle class.

Deep[insert anything] will start to become more normal and mainstream.

Controversial one - trump will win the elections.

Half my predictions will turn out false. (that means half will come true)

> More people will move towards smaller silos of 'social media' like a discord, telegram or reddit group.

What present trends and behavior changes point you to this prediction?

Privacy concerns regarding sharing everything with others or lack of trust from current giants.

Commercial overload and noise. Attention is split into bigger and bigger share among the top players and is constantly gamed.

Disinformation and government ability to censor in one swoop compared to a private group made of few or many people you know or have similar interest with.

Rising nationalism? Politicians are catching up and government is pushing for alternatives to US tech giants and ability for other countries to influence their people.

Generational change?

Long term - when universal income is a thing or there is more time allocated for your hobbies, people will have time to invest in their particular interest groups and such. Currently, many don't have much time to do it so they rely on centralized sources for their stuff which is filled with noise and too many different people they don't know.

My scar tissue from building consumer products tells me big shifts rarely happen without micro trends.

For instance, macro trends could be bad pr, mishandling of user data and privacy. But when you really ask those teens who've shifted away from Facebook, you realize the case is different.

- Feed based networks require more friction than messaging and story-based networks

- Ability to share w close friends increases sharing

- Synchronous communication over IRC feels better than async posts and comments

What do you think could be a strong micro-trend reason to shift to siloed social networks instead of a global social network?

> go watch uncle bob’s

Nope, still not going to watch anything from Uncle Bob.

https://twitter.com/sarahmei/status/895327923346984960

What a knob. As if the Agile Manifesto weren't crime enough.

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