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Well, it's a common belief that comebacks in technology don't happen often, but
this time I predict three comebacks. I cannot recommend that you base your
decisions (much less investment plans) based on it, but here they are.
Comeback #1: Non-x86 Machines
Once upon a time, companies spent a fortune on costy UNIX servers or even
IBM mainframes, just to be able to run their operation. Since then, x86-based
computers have become faster and more capable, enough to make people be
able to run Microsoft Windows NT or Unix-based Operating systems on them. This
is now the most popular setup on the Internet for servers (much less clients
and workstations).
However, these x86 machines are not as integrated as their non-x86 equivalents
(UltraSPARC, PowerPC, etc.), are still much slower (due to the limitations
of the x86 architecture vs. the superior RISC family of architectures). This
costs in a lot of time of maintenance, many hardware failures, and sub-optimal
lifetime. It is well-known that there are some PC XT machines which are still
running. However, finding a low-end desktop Pentium I machine that's still
OK is an exercise in futility. And even the high-end x86 servers suffer from
many problems.
Human time is much more costy than shelling some money for getting a good
RISC machine. And with the portability and stability of
the GNU system, and portable and free
operating systems such as Linux, or the BSDs, you can easily run a server
there at ease.
So what can Sun and IBM (and friends) do about it?. They should phase
out their own OSes in favour of Linux, as people have grown to dislike Solaris
(to say nothing of AIX, HP-UX, or greater brain-damages). Don't get me wrong
- Solaris has its place and I'm sure is a fine piece of engineering. But
GNU/Linux is better for trying to promote the hardware.
Sun should also make the OpenSolaris licence
GPLv2 and GPLv3
compatible, to allow it to borrow code from Linux and other GPLed-products
(and vice versa). And they should also start supporting Perl, PHP, CPython,
CRuby, Mono etc. etc. instead of just Java or whatever has been hyped. (Similar
to what Microsoft have been doing recently for its MS-Windows OSes).
All of this will allow selling more hardware, getting more support and ergo
- more profits. I think the transition to non-x86 machines will happen anyhow,
but that will make it faster, and much more profitable for them.
Note that it is not the end of either Intel or
much less the
end of Microsoft. I still see workstations dominated by x86 in the near
future, and both MS and Intel are insanely profitable and have enough time
to re-invent themselves. But I think (and hope) we'll be seeing more and
more non-x86 servers and to a lesser extent workstations.
Comeback #2 : Mandriva
Once upon a time, the
Mandriva Linux distribution (formerly Mandrake) was the de-facto standard
for home Linux desktops. Then vocal Debian people started spreading a lot of
pro-Debian and anti-everything-else FUD, and Ubuntu also became the over-hyped
distribution-of-the-moment. Meanwhile, naturally, Mandriva suffered from
lack of popularity and negative FUD, but also still continued to improve.
Right now, as Ubuntu Hardy (which I nicknamed "Hardly") tends to hang up or
worse so often, and
Ubuntu as
a general rule seems to be infested with red-tape, it seems that there's
an opening for Mandriva and distributions that are very good, but were not
as hyped as Ubuntu.
Here are some Israelis who converted away from Ubuntu lately:
These are all Linux experts and FOSS contributors. It's harder to tell what
the common joe who wants to install Linux at home will choose. But I think
that they will tend to hear a recommendation from the experts, too.
Will Mandriva become the hottest distribution? Maybe not. But it doesn't
matter - Mandriva was never about hype. Naturally, Mandriva has had and still
have its share of bugs and problems (mostly non-critical). But so do most
other distributions, including such whose users were spreading anti-hype
against it.
Writing this from a Cooker (which is the Mandriva equivalent of something like
Debian Testing or Unstable) system.
Comeback #3: Perl
And now we come to the third and final comeback - Perl. You can often here
that "Perl is dead", or that "Perl is dying", etc. It's a matter of image,
more than technology or mindshare. Many people would blame it on the anti-Perl
FUD we can hear from various sources. But I believe the problem has lied in
the Perl world itself. To quote an email I sent:
The Perl technology is in an excellent shape. It's fast, feature-rich,
powerful, easy to use and learn, under active development, relatively
bug-free, with many automated tests, and with many 1st party, 2nd party
and 3rd party enhancements (re CPAN).
However, the Perl community is sick. Not dying - but sick.
This sickness was not caused by external attacks. Instead it was created from
within the Perl community. By a leadership/intelligencia who were more keen on
writing and selling closed books (see
my essay about it)
than on promoting the core Perl technology, documentation and community. It
was caused by an "official" IRC network (which is still the first hit on a
Google search for "irc perl") which is full of ego, abuse and hostility - where
kicking, bannings (and seemingly K-lines) are not only common, but tolerated
and seem desirable. It was caused by administrators and leaders who became too
"busy" (and as a result heavily unproductive) to have time for Perl, which
is what have been placing food on their table. It was caused by central sites
whose source code and data were hidden from the public due to a lot of
unknown bad reasons, and for absolutely no good ones. (We advocate openness
after all).
But most of all it was caused by the many competent and active Perl
contributors who did not take the initiative to replace the existing and sick
infrastructure by a
more independent and decentralised effort.
(I had written
something
relatively similar in the pre-Web-2.0 era as part of my "Usability of
the Perl World for Newcomers Essay". Nevertheless perlbuzz.com deserves
credit for presenting it better, making it public knowledge, and making
it more obvious.)
But the situation is now getting better. There are more independent
developers who have started to set up sites and help resources of their own.
More people blog about their Perl experiences. I'm also going to continue giving
my share of the contribution by setting up
Perl-Speak (Please don't register yet -
the E-mail does not work yet due to problems with my hosting), by
contributing to the FAQs, documentation and wikis, and by helping with
coding. People like me would also like to complement the inadequate,
"official", and completely non-open *.perl.org infrastructure, which has
been suffering from bitrot and neglect.
Lately, I've had the pleasure of talking to many people on IRC who have
decided to learn Perl for various reasons, and some of them are young
or even underage. Along with CPAN and perl5, Perl offers some clear advantages
that no language has.
Again, Perl is also not about hype.
Some people have privately raved about Perl and recommended it to their
friends, but otherwise Perl was promoted quietly, bottom-up and mostly by
word-of-mouth. It's hard to know if Perl will become the "hottest" language
again. But I believe it will still become more popular, even among new
programmers.
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