OSes and middleware will become largely commoditized, Booch says GRAPEVINE, TEXAS — Projecting what the world will be like in 2031, Rational Chief Scientist and IBM Fellow Grady Booch predicted that software would touch every aspect of life and, thusly, developers would only grow in their importance to society.After taking the audience through a history of IBM during a speech at the Rational Software Development User Conference here Tuesday, Booch said the decade of 2030 would bring about the “rise of the machines,” with robotics and related technologies. In addition to noting negative events in upcoming decades, such as a continuation of the AIDS crisis and increased loss of privacy, Booch touched upon a variety of advances he sees happening, including automated surgery, metallic glass, the disappearance of the DVD, photorealism in movies, and pervasiveness of RFID.“Every advance I speak about requires software that we have not yet written, every advance,” Booch said. The decade of 2010, meanwhile, will be an age of transparency, with developers making it easier for users to work with computer technology, Booch said. It is still too difficult for people to use what programmers are building, he said. By 2020, it will not be possible to operate in the world without touching software, he said.He also predicted the death of Moore’s Law of increasing processor speed and said that will bring new responsibilities to developers. “The IBM physicists have told us we know how to bring transistors down to four atoms,” Booch said. “That means from a software perspective, we can no longer be as sloppy as we once were.” Booch also stressed that new program languages would emerge after Java. “Java’s not the last language. It may be [Sun Microsystems Chairman/CEO] Scott McNealy’s last language, but it’s not the last language that will exist in the world,” McNealy said.In addition, programming aspects will become mainstream and operating systems and middleware will become largely commoditized, said Booch. IBM is a major supplier of middleware. Even J2EE and Microsoft’s .Net will become commodities, he said. Developers, meanwhile, will have grown up believing the Internet always existed. And a rethinking of software patent laws may be needed worldwide to allow for the growth in software. Developers, Booch said, “do indeed make a difference. As we look at the next generation of software to be built, please don’t forget that the fundamentals still apply.”One conference attendee concurred with Booch’s notion that software will only become more important.“I agree,” said Dana Martin, a configuration management analyst at Digital Learning, which develops software for school districts. “You kind of see it now,” with the importance of software such as large databases that can cause problems when shutting down, she said. The growth in software will have its downside, she said, such as a lack of privacy.Also at the conference:* An IBM official said the company plans to form a consortium by the end of the year to promote and develop the company’s Power processor architecture. Members would pursue implementations of Power for different markets, such as telecommunications or set-top boxes, said the official, Richard Michos, vice president of Channel and Alliance Marketing at IBM. Big Blue would maintain a role as steward over the architecture, similar to how Sun Microsystems shepherds development of Java, Michos said. * IBM with the planned Atlantic release of the IBM Software Development Platform later this year will expand the number of tools that will enable application development on Linux systems. Software Development