10 More Predictions

Five years ago, in 2019, I made 10 predictions for the next 10 years (so 2029).

Let’s see how they turned out, halfway through in 2024.

I’ll grade myself out of 10 points for each prediction based on how good they’re looking at the moment.

Here’s the list:

1. Self-driving cars will still be two years out

This one is still true. By self-driving, I meant take a nap as the driver and leave your life in the hands of your car. Two years out was a jab at some indefinite future, which I think is also true – people are still gunning for self-driving cars, but it’ll most likely take longer than expected. This prediction is looking good, we’ll see in 2029.

Verdict: 10 points.

2. Rust will become a top 10 language in popularity

By 2019, Rust was the most admired language on stack overflow’s developer survey for four years. In 2024, it’s won that title nine times in a row. No easy feat, given the amount of programming languages in common use.

Currently, Rust is the 17th most popular language according to the TIOBE index, and it has quite a ways to go to crack the top 10. But it’s got momentum for sure.

Verdict: 5 points.

3. WebAssembly will kill JavaScript and Desktop Apps

In 2019, webassembly was hyped as freeing us from having to write our front-ends in javascript, but also bringing the browser sandbox with extra security to the desktop. It had a lot of hype. Five years later, however, there hasn’t been much progress. Maybe something will change, but this one is not looking good – few people have replaced their electron usage with WASM sandboxed apps, and wasm is still struggling by committee. We’ll see.

Verdict: 2 points.

4. JSON will be replaced with a Typed Transfer Protocol

This is the prediction I regret the most. First of all, protobuf was already somewhat popular at the time, and there were other protocols that were typed transfer protocols. On the other hand, it’s gutsy. JSON had been the interface between the frontend and backend since XHR requests, so seeing it replaced with something else like it replaced XML would be an interesting bet. Regardless, this one isn’t looking good either.

Verdict: 0 points.

5. Functional Programming will finally become popular

By 2019, most languages had adopted functional programming features – Rust was a popular language that married idioms that allowed for low-level control and functional programming in a tasteful way, Swift, Kotlin, and Typescript have all improved mobile and web development with their adoption of functional programming features as well. But I meant this prediction to be: We’d all be using languages that were FP first, like Elixir, Clojure, OCaml, Haskell, etc. It seems like programming languages are adopting FP features (as they always have) but the community at large is not using FP languages for development (more than they used to, at least), so this one is also an easy grade.

Verdict: 0 points.

6. Microservice hype will wear off

In 2019, at the hype of low interest rates, hiring became widespread and microservice architecture spread like wildfire. At some size of company, I think it’s inevitable to have lots of services, but that doesn’t mean every team gets its own set of services, like microservices implies. In 2024, with interest rates being closer to 4%, companies have cut hiring and the microservice fad has gone down in hype, with companies favoring more monolithic approaches to web development. I’m not sure if it’ll continue on (this is like betting that interest rates will stay at 4%+ until 2029) but since the hype has worn off once, I’m assuming it could do so again.

Verdict: 8 points.

7. Facebook will no longer be a top 10 company

(I should’ve been more specific, in my mind I was thinking top 10 American company by market cap)

In 2019, some people (myself included) were seeing Facebook as a one trick pony. They had three services (Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram), of which they bought two, that were overindexed in social media (which was waning in popularity at the time), and only relied on ad revenue. Basically, if social media becomes less popular, then Facebook will go down.

Zuckerberg understood this pretty well, so in 2021, Facebook decided to change its name to Meta and go all-in on VR technology. This failed pretty miserably, with Meta’s stock price tanking in response. It’s back now, but Meta is currently 6th in market cap for American companies and could be pushed out from the top 10 by some upstarts. We’ll see.

Verdict: 5 points.

8. An AI startup will become this decade’s hottest startup

In 2019, AI was not as hyped as it was, but in 2022, when OpenAI released Chatgpt, things changed forever. In my opinion, OpenAI currently holds the title of “hottest startup”, so I think this one was right, within 3 years.

Verdict: 10 points.

9. Blockchain will be this decade’s beanie babies

Basically every blockchain outside of Bitcoin and Ethereum are totally useless, just as they were in 2019. So, they haven’t really become more popular or less popular in 5 years. Easy grade.

Verdict: 0 points.

10. You and I will host our apps on a new cloud provider (read. not AWS)

I still hate configuring AWS, but with Azure and GCP fumbling the ball to try and take market share, and AWS releasing more fundamental services, AWS has maintained its position as market leader. I don’t see myself (or a lot of other big companies) hosting their software on any other cloud. This one is also easy to score.

Verdict: 0 points.