21 hot programming trends -- and

21 going cold
Programmers love to sneer at the world of fashion where trends blow through like breezes. Skirt
lengths rise and fall, pigments come and go, ties get fatter, then thinner. But in the world of
technology, rigor, science, math, and precision rule over fad.

That's not to say programming is a profession devoid of trends. The difference is that programming
trends are driven by greater efficiency, increased customization, and ease of use. The new technologies
that deliver one or more of these eclipse the previous generation. It's a meritocracy, not a whimsy-
ocracy.

What follows is a list of what's hot and what's not among today's programmers. Not everyone will
agree with what's A-listed, what's D-listed, and what's been left out. That's what makes programming
an endlessly fascinating profession: rapid change, passionate debate, sudden comebacks.

Hot: Preprocessors
Not: Full language stacks
It wasn't long ago that people who created a new programming language had to build everything that
turned code into the bits fed to the silicon. Then someone figured out they could piggyback on the
work that came before. Now people with a clever idea simply write a preprocessor that translates the
new code into something old with a rich set of libraries and APIs.

The scripting languages like Python or JavaScript were once limited to little projects, but now they’re
the foundation for serious work. And those who didn’t like JavaScript created CoffeeScript, a
preprocessor that lets them code, again, without the onerous punctuation. There are dozens of
variations preslicing and predicing the syntax in a different way.

The folks who loved dynamic typing created Groovy, a simpler version of Java without the overly
insistent punctuation. There seem to be dozens of languages like Scala or Clojure that run on the JVM,
but there's only one JVM. You can run many languages on .Net’s VM. Why reinvent the wheel?

Hot: Docker
Not: Hypervisors
This isn’t exactly true. The hypervisors have their place, and many Docker containers run inside of
operating systems running on top of hypervisors. However, Docker containers are soooo much smaller
than virtual machine images, and that makes them much easier to use and deploy.

When developers can, they prefer to ship only Docker containers, thanks to the ease with which they
can be juggled during deployment. Clever companies such as Joyent are figuring out how to squeeze
even more fat out of the stack so that the containers can run, as they like to say, on “bare metal.”
Hot: JavaScript MV* frameworks
Not: JavaScript files
Long ago, everyone learned to write JavaScript to pop up an alert box or check to see that the email
address in the form contained an @ sign. Now HTML Ajax apps are so sophisticated that few people
start from scratch. It's simpler to adopt an elaborate framework and write a bit of glue code to
implement your business logic.

There are now dozens of frameworks like Kendo, Sencha, jQuery Mobile, AngularJS, Ember, Backbone,
Meteor JS, and many more, all ready to handle the events and content for your Web apps and pages.

Those are merely the Web apps. There are also a number tuned to offering cross-platform
development for the smartphone/tablet world. Technologies like NativeScript, PhoneGap, and Sencha
Touch are a few of the options for creating apps out of HTML5 technology

Hot: CSS frameworks

Not: Generic Cascading Style Sheets
Once upon a time, adding a bit of pizzazz to a Web page meant opening the CSS file and including a
new command like font-style:italic. Then you saved the file and went to lunch
after a hard morning's work. Now Web pages are so sophisticated that it's impossible to fill a file with
such simple commands. One tweak to a color and everything goes out of whack. It's like they say
about conspiracies and ecologies: Everything is interconnected.

That's where CSS frameworks like SASS and its cousins Compass have found solid footing. They
encourage literate, stable coding by offering programming constructs such as real variables, nesting
blocks, and mix-ins. It may not sound like much newness in the programming layer, but it's a big leap
forward for the design layer.

Hot: SVG + JavaScript on Canvas

Not: Flash
Flash has been driving people crazy for years, but the artists have always loved the results. The
antialiased rendering looks great, and many talented artists have built a deep stack of Flash code to
offer sophisticated transitions and animations.

Now that the JavaScript layer has the ability to do much of the same, browser manufacturers and
developers are cheering for the end of Flash. They see better integration with the DOM layer coming
from new formats like SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics). The SVG and HTML comprise one big pile of
tags, and that's often easier for Web developers to use. Then there are large APIs that offer elaborate
drawing on the Canvas object, often with the help of video cards. Put them together and you're left
with few reasons to use Flash anymore.
Hot: Almost big data (analysis without
Hadoop)
Not: Big data (with Hadoop)
Everyone likes to feel like the Big Man on Campus, and if they aren't, they're looking for a campus of
the appropriate size where they can stand out. It's no surprise then that when the words "big data"
started flowing through the executive suite, the suits started asking for the biggest, most powerful big
data systems as if they were purchasing a yacht or a skyscraper.

The funny thing is, many problems aren't big enough to use the fanciest big data solutions. Sure,
companies like Google or Yahoo track all of our Web browsing; they have data files measured in
petabytes or yottabytes. But most companies have data sets that can easily fit in the RAM of a basic
PC. I'm writing this on a PC with 16GB of RAM -- enough for a billion events with a handful of bytes. In
most algorithms, the data doesn't need to be read into memory because streaming it from an SSD is
fine.

There will be instances that demand the fast response times of dozens of machines in a Hadoop cloud
running in parallel, but many will do fine plugging along on a single machine without the hassles of
coordination or communication.

Hot: Spark
Not: Hadoop
It’s not so much that Hadoop is cooling off. It’s more that Spark is red hot, making the Hadoop model
look a bit old. Spark borrows some of the best ideas of Hadoop’s approach to extracting meaning
from large volumes of data and updates them with a few solid improvements that make the code run
much, much faster. The biggest may be the way that Spark keeps data in fast memory instead of
requiring everything be written to the distributed file system.

Of course many people are merging the two by using Spark’s processing speed on data stored in
Hadoop’s distributed file system. They’re more partners than competitors.

Hot: Artificial intelligence/machine learning

Not: Big data
No one knows what the phrase “artificial intelligence” means, and that helps the marketers, especially
since the term “big data” has run its course. They’re grabbing terms from artificial intelligence and
upgrading the sophistication of the big, number-crunching algorithms that plow through our log files
and clickstreams. By borrowing the more sophisticated algorithms from the 50-odd years of AI
research, we stand a better chance than ever of finding that signal in the noise. Tools run the gamut
from machine learning frameworks to cognitive computing, all the way up to IBM’s Watson, which you
can now ping to solve your problems. Each offers its own level of machine intelligence, and with this,
the promise of taking over more of the data analysis and forensics for us.
Hot: Game frameworks
Not: Native game development
Once upon a time, game development meant hiring plenty of developers who wrote everything in C
from scratch. Sure, it cost a bazillion dollars, but it looked great. Now, no one can afford the luxury of
custom code. Most games developers gave up their pride years ago and use libraries like Unity,
Corona, or LibGDX to build their systems. They don't write C code as much as instructions for the
libraries. Is it a shame that our games aren't handcrafted with pride but stamped out using the same
engine? Nope. Most of the developers are relieved -- because they don't have to deal with the details,
they can concentrate on the game play, narrative arc, characters, and art.

Hot: Single-page Web apps

Not: Websites
Remember when URLs pointed to Web pages filled with static text and images? How simple and
quaint to put all information in a network of separate Web pages called a website. The design team
would spend hours haggling over the site map and trying to make it easy enough to navigate.

New Web apps are front ends to large databases filled with content. When the Web app wants
information, it pulls it from the database and pours it into the local mold. There's no need to mark up
the data with all the Web extras needed to build a Web page. The data layer is completely separate
from the presentation and formatting layer. Here, the rise of mobile computing is another factor: a
single, responsive-designed Web page that work like an app -- all the better to avoid the turmoil of
the app stores.

Hot: Mobile Web apps

Not: Native mobile apps
Let's say you have a great idea for mobile content. You could rush off and write separate versions for
iOS, Android, Windows 8, and maybe even BlackBerry OS or one of the others. Each requires a
separate team speaking a different programming language. Then each platform's app store exerts its
own pound of flesh before the app can be delivered to the users.

Or you could build one HTML app and put it on a website to run on all the platforms. If there's a
change, you don't need to return to the app store, begging for a quick review of a bug fix. Now that
the HTML layer is getting faster and running on faster chips, this approach can compete with native
apps better on even more complicated and interactive apps.

Hot: Android
Not: iOS
Was it only a few years ago that lines snaked out of Apple's store? Times change. While the iPhone
and iPad continue to have dedicated fans who love their rich, sophisticated UI, the raw sales numbers
continue to favor Android. Some reports even say that more than 80 percent of phones sold were
Androids.

The reason may be as simple as cost. While iOS devices still cost a pretty penny, the Android world is
flooded with plenty of competition that's producing tablets for as low as one-fifth the price. Saving
money is always a temptation.

But another factor may be the effect of open source. Anyone can compete in the marketplace -- and
they do. There are big Android tablets and little ones. There are Android cameras and even Android
refrigerators. No one has to say, "Mother, may I?" to Google to innovate. If they have an idea, they
follow their mind.

Apple, though, is learning from the Android space. The iPhone 6 comes with different screen sizes, and
what do you know? The lines are starting to reappear.

Hot: GPU
Not: CPU
When software was simple and the instructions were arranged in a nice line, the CPU was king of the
computer because it did all of the heavy lifting. Now that video games are filled with extensive
graphical routines that can run in parallel, the video card runs the show. It's easy to spend $500, $600,
or more on a fancy video card, and some serious gamers use more than one. That's more than double
the price of many basic desktops. Gamers aren't the only ones bragging about their GPU cards.
Computer scientists are now converting many parallel applications to run hundreds of times faster on
the GPU.

Hot: GitHub
Not: Résumés
Sure, you could learn about a candidate by reading a puffed-up list of accomplishments that include
vice president of the junior high chess club. But reading someone's actual code is so much richer and
more instructive. Do they write good comments? Do they waste too much time breaking items into
tiny classes that do little? Is there a real architecture with room for expansion? All these questions can
be answered by a glimpse at their code.

This is why participating in open source projects is becoming more and more important for finding a
job. Sharing the code from a proprietary project is hard, but open source code can go everywhere.

Hot: Renting
Not: Buying
When Amazon rolled out its sales for computers and other electronics on Black Friday, the company
forgot to include hypeworthy deals for its cloud. Give it time. Not so long ago, companies opened their
own data center and hired their own staff to run the computers they purchased outright. Now they
rent the computers, the data center, the staff, and even the software by the hour. No one wants the
hassles of owning anything. It's all a good idea, at least until the website goes viral and you realize
you're paying for everything by the click. Now if only Amazon finds a way to deliver the cloud with its
drones, the trends will converge.

Hot: Cloud complexity

Not: Cloud simplicity
The early days of cloud computing saw vendors emphasizing how easy it was to click a button and get
a running machine. Simplicity was king.

Now choosing the right machine and figuring out the right discount program could take more time
than writing the code. There are dozens of machine profiles available, and most cloud providers
support some of the older models. All offer unique levels of performance, so you better be ready to
benchmark them to decide which is the most cost-effective for you. Is it worth it to save 12 cents per
hour by getting by with less RAM? It sure could be if you’re spinning up 100 machines for months at a
time.

To make matters more complex, the cloud companies offer several options for getting discounts by
paying in advance or buying in bulk. You have to put them in the spreadsheet too. It’s enough to
invest in an online course on cloud cost engineering.

Hot: IaaS
Not: PaaS
Who doesn’t want to be coddled? Who doesn’t want extra help? Yes, developers often like having all
of the extra support that comes from working with a full PaaS. There are plenty of extra features, some
of which are actually useful.

But there’s one big fear: Platform means lock-in. Sometimes the trade-off is worth it, but sometimes
it’s a nightmare. IaaS options are more open to change. If you don’t like your Ubuntu server running in
an IaaS rack, you can install your own Ubuntu server in your office and go it alone. It's not quite as
easy with a PaaS.

Hot: Web interfaces

Not: IDEs
A long time ago, people used a command-line compiler. Then someone integrated that with an editor
and other tools to create the IDE. Now it's time for the IDE to be eclipsed (ha) by browser-based tools
that let you edit the code, often of a working system. If you don't like how WordPress functions, it
comes with a built-in editor that lets you change the code right then and there. Microsoft's Azure lets
you write JavaScript glue code right in its portal. These systems don't offer the best debugging
environments, and there's something dangerous about editing production code, but the idea has legs.

You can start Cloud9, Aptana, and Mozilla’s WebIDE, but keep exploring. The Web interfaces are
becoming more and more powerful. It’s possible, for instance, to build an entire big data analysis
project in Microsoft’s Azure website.
Hot: Node.js
Not: JavaEE, Ruby on Rails
The server world has always thrived on the threaded model that let the operating system indulge any
wayward, inefficient, or dissolute behavior by programmers. Whatever foolish loop or wasteful
computation programmers coded, the OS would balance performance by switching between the
threads.

Then Node.js came along with the JavaScript callback model of programming, and the code ran really
fast -- faster than anyone expected was possible from a toy language once used only for alert boxes.
Suddenly the overhead of creating new threads became obvious and Node.js took off. Problems arise
when programmers don't behave well, but the responsibility has largely been good for them. Making
resource constraints obvious to programmers usually produces faster code.

The Node.js world also benefits from offering harmony between browser and server. The same code
runs on both making it easier for developers to move around features and duplicate functionality. As a
result, Node.js layers have become the hottest stacks on the Internet.

Hot: PHP 7.0

Not: Old PHP
In the past, PHP was a simple way to knock out a few dynamic Web pages. If you needed a bit of
variety, you could embed simple code between HTML tags. It was basic enough for Web developers to
embrace it, but slow enough to draw sneers from hard-core programmers.

That’s old news because some PHP lovers at places like WordPress and Facebook have been
competing to execute PHP code faster than ever by incorporating the Just-in-Time compiler
technology that once made Java such a high-performing solution. Now tools like the HipHop Virtual
Machine and PHP 7.0 are delivering speeds that may be twice as fast as the old versions. Take that,
Node.js and Java.

Hot: Just-in-time education

Not: Four years up front
The computer-mediated courses aren’t new anymore, and everyone is enjoying the advantage of
watching a video lecture with buttons for speeding up, slowing down, or asking the prof to repeat that
last point. The online forums are also improvements over the old seminar rooms where only one
blowhard could dominate the discussion at a time.

But it’s not only the nature of and technology behind online coursework that’s upending the education
industrial complex; it’s also the flexibility to learn whenever and wherever you need to. This is changing
the dynamic as people no longer have to invest four years of outrageous tuition on a big collection of
courses that may or may not be relevant to their lives. Why take courses on compilers until you know
you’ll actually work on a compiler? If the boss wants to switch from a relational database to a NoSQL
engine, then you can invest the time in a course in modern data stores. You get fresh information
when you need it and don’t clutter your brain with quickly rotting ideas.