The next technologies
Archive - Originally posted on "The Horse's Mouth" - 2005-07-29 12:46:47 - Graham EllisWhat technology is up and coming?
What will people want to learn about next year?
I'm taking a long weekend in Virginia, USA; visiting close family with Lisa. For many people, an 8 hour flight is something that they're thinking about months ahead - planning, writing lists, packing. We got ready early this time - I had my laptop's "mobile office" updated the day before we left, and had checked that our accoms have internet access. But I still - I confess - left throwing in clothes to the morning of departure; frankly, it's a bit routine and we're set up to make it such. Life / office goes on and you'll still find the phones answered and you'll still get email replies within 24 hours (organisation) or 48 hours (awkward technical questions or detailed proposals).
I love my job.
I love telling people about the wonders of Python, Perl and PHP ... of MySQL and Tcl and Linux. And so - even on a trip like this - I take every opportunity to look, to listen, to learn in our techical field. How can that possibly be? Well - I have a sibling-in-law who works for a major Internet service provider and rubbing shoulders there gives me some flavour from a different perspective (the AOL one), and another sibling-in-law who's such an Ebay user and enthusiast that holidays it's something of a side business for him. In the UK, when we're out with people we can turn into techno-bores. With these two though there's an element of give and take. It's also instructive to listen to Phil talking about his experiences / thoughts in the hospitality (hotel) trade; to some extent, we're in the hospitality trade too as we help people plan their visits to Melksham, and open our doors to them.
But there's more than just family. We walk into PC stores, into book stores, and look / see the latest gizmos and publications on their shelves. Frequently in the past, we've found that a USA trend one year is followed by a similar UK trend 6 to 18 months later and we're always anxious to be fore-warned. This isn't an inveterate rule - I would suggest that Ruby, for example has made a small but significant niche for itself in the USA; in the UK, it seems to have been regarded as "just" another scripting language and folks stick with the old favourites of Perl or Tcl, speciliase through to PHP, or move up to Python.
I'm looking forward, then, to hitting the techno-places and I'll be adding a report in here in the next few days.