2009 software development predictions put to the test

It’s a tough job, playing pundit. Imagine how much tougher it would be if we were actually expected to get it right! No wonder we tech columnists like to spend the end of the year making predictions. Even if our accuracy falls somewhere short of a stopped clock, no one will remember our prognostications by this time next year anyway.

But unlike some other columns, the Fatal Exception blog stands for accountability. The proverbial euro stops here. So before I turn my crystal ball to the coming year, I thought it would be appropriate to first look back on my predictions for 2009 to see what I got right, what I got wrong — and what I missed completely.

[ It’s that time of the year again — don’t forget to check out InfoWorld’s 2009 geek gadget gift guide. | Keep up with app dev issues and trends with InfoWorld’s Fatal Exception and Strategic Developer ]

Microsoft warmed to open source — sort of After years of butting heads with the open standards movement, Microsoft’s proprietary technologies were losing ground to Web-based alternatives in 2008. The software giant needed a brand makeover, badly — and it especially needed to improve its image among developers.

That’s why I predicted Microsoft would continue to cozy up to the open source community throughout 2009, and I was right — in a way. Among other initiatives, Microsoft contributed 20,000 lines of driver code to the Linux kernel, released the code to the .Net Micro Framework under an open source license, and funded the CodePlex Foundation to encourage corporate participation in open source projects.

Then again, these efforts were mostly self-serving. The Linux driver code was needed to improve Linux performance under Windows Server’s Hyper-V virtualization. The .Net Micro Framework has yet to gain traction in the increasingly competitive mobile development market, so open-sourcing it was mostly a punt. And critics say the CodePlex Foundation is structured in a way that gives Microsoft too much influence.

I was also too optimistic when I predicted we’d see Linux ports of major Microsoft products. Instead, Sam Ramji, Microsoft’s leading open source advocate, left the company — and a quick search of the Microsoft Careers site reveals plenty of positions open for foot soldiers in the war against Linux, OpenOffice.org, and open source in general. I guess the more things change, the more they stay the same.

The bright spot for Windows developers, however, is that Windows 7 is here — and judging from the early reports, it’s been a far greater success than my cautiously optimistic assessment of last year allowed. There’s been less news of Windows Azure than I expected, however; I guess we’ll have to wait until next year for that.

Sun imploded, Java still in orbit My boldest prediction for 2009 was that Sun Microsystems would finally begin crumbling into oblivion, but here I actually wasn’t bold enough. Sun didn’t sell itself off in pieces as I suspected it would, and despite all the rumors to the contrary, it didn’t go to IBM. When the much-ballyhooed merger with Big Blue fell through, however, I was the first to predict that Oracle would swoop in to snatch the prize — so that should count for something.

What I didn’t bank on was heavy resistance to the Oracle/Sun merger from the European Commission. I thought we’d see continued fallout from the Oracle/BEA merger of 2008, but that’s been all but forgotten in the wake of the Sun deal. The EC’s inquiries have cast a cloud over Java’s future direction, too. I predicted the Java market might move in a more open source direction, but while Red Hat is still making its presence felt, it didn’t post the big gains in 2009 that I had expected.

I was right about one thing, though: Oracle or no Oracle, nobody beat a path to Sun’s door for JavaFX. Talk of its demise may yet be premature, but most of the discussion of Sun’s new UI technology seemed to happen onstage at JavaOne — not in development shops.

Web 2.0 and counting Perhaps it was wishful thinking when I predicted we’d hear the last of “Web 2.0.” Sure enough, another Web 2.0 Expo came and went — but I still believe this hackneyed phrase is on the wane. As Web standards continue to evolve and browser capabilities improve, the apps we were hanging the “Web 2.0” tag on yesterday already look tired today.

In keeping with this trend, I predicted open source AJAX toolkits would fare better than proprietary ones. I called out Dojo in particular, and whaddaya know? Tibco donated the source for its General Interface RIA platform to the Dojo project in 2009. I think we’ll see Web developers continue in this direction, particularly as HTML 5 and ECMAScript 5 gain traction.

I guess it was also wishful thinking to expect Microsoft to take the hint, though. I predicted Silverlight would dry up and blow away in 2009, though no such luck. But Redmond’s tenacity alone can’t guarantee success — heard much about XPS versus PDF lately?

Finally, it wasn’t hard to guess the economy would play a vital role in shaping the tech market throughout 2009, but while I predicted R&D spending would slow and major announcements would be sparse, the big vendors proved me wrong. Microsoft laid off workers for the first time in history but actually increased its R&D spending, while Google’s Chrome OS announcement took me completely by surprise.

Still, I’m going to call correct my hunch that offshoring would slow in 2009 (even though others predicted the opposite). InfoSys warned of declining revenues for the fiscal year, amid reports of overall consolidation in the Indian outsourcing industry. But it was bittersweet news for U.S. tech workers. InfoSys claimed its slump was due to customers postponing offshoring plans, not canceling them, and part of the problem was that customers were demanding even lower prices. I guess IT workers aren’t out of the woods yet.

So that was 2009. And while I’m no Kreskin, I don’t think I did all that badly. Check in next week to see what my crystal ball has to offer for 2010, and then keep coming back. If nothing else, when I’m wrong, you’ll hear it here first!

This article, “2009 software development predictions put to the test,” was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Follow the latest developments in software development at InfoWorld.com.