Blockchain...
The first time I heard of it was in relation to cryptocurrency. The second time, another cryptocurrency. And then, several times lat...
For further actions, you may consider blocking this person and/or reporting abuse
Great points. I've never gotten too caught up in fads but I have suffered from anxiety-inducing FOMO before I got over that line of thinking.
Great thoughts! It's almost as if you have to think about the problem you're trying to solve yourself and ignore which languages/tools have the most headlines at any given moment. ;-)
Thanks for this; as a fairly new developer I'm less aware of the fads of the past, and get caught up with considering learning the current fads. I generally don't because of laziness, but it's so easy for me to get overwhelmed by thoughts of what I "should" learn.
Check out this year's gartner hype cycle which puts AI at it's peak and projects that Blockchain is in for disillusionment.
cityam.com/270451/gartner-hype-cyc...
I agree that Neural Networks and Blockchain have been hyped up to a ridiculous extent, but I think there's good reason for it. Because in contrast to Javascript, Wordpress and the other languages/frameworks you pointed to, these new technologies are infrastructural. Once they mature, they will change practically every aspect of our lives, as people and programmers.
So I wouldn't call these technologies fads, because although the hype seems unreasonable, and most of these new AI/blockchain start ups will fail, in the long run these technologies are here to stay.
Well, sure, but remember - a fad isn't a fad because of itself, but because of crowd response. Python is a solid technology, and is most definitely here to stay, but it made my list of bygone fads.
Honestly, I could have also included Object Oriented Programming, Test Driven Development, and Agile Methodology as well - they all also classify as fads in how they were hype-adopted. Blockchain and AI will no doubt continue to be important, but that doesn't mean they're not fads.
Okay I'm going by the definition of a fad as being "short-lived" rather than just "over-hyped". Regardless, thanks for the article it was a good read.:)
That's actually the funny thing I discovered about the word "fad" in terms of definition - it doesn't necessarily imply the thing in question is short-lived.
Outside of programming, look at the Beanie Babies fad. They may have considerably faded in terms of hype, but TY still makes a TON of money from selling them.
Lol beanie babies were my jam one school year.
Honestly though, I don't think AI and blockchain will fade, or even slow down in the long term. AI will eventually be building software and taking our jobs, while steering our cars, babysitting our kids and even giving us life advice as personal assistants. :/
And Blockchain is the backbone of IOT, not to mention finance and eventually governance. It's only a matter of time until the tech catches up to the promise. But until then we'll have to deal with misinformed CTO's making bad decisions, and ICOs making bank off people's false hopes.
Beanie babies are still my jam :)
You said what I always think when I see a tweet about how AI will suddenly gain consciousness and take over; how we should use JS directly in CPU; how SaaS is the must-have thing for your all apps; how DevOps is the superhero that fits everywhere; and how we should use Unity3D to make multi-platform apps.
Even if I exaggerated some of these thoughts, all of them are based on true stories.
Often, we follow the rule of the golden hammer "When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail"
The problem is when your "non tech savvy but thinks he is" employer goes fervently after every fad he sees, completely disregarding the measured and researched feedback of his developers. I am going through hell with this stupid "JavaScript for everything!" fad right now because of it, and I just can't wait until I get away from it. He's losing a much needed employee over his stupidity, and I'm pretty sure he's not alone in that.
I just had to Google what Blockchain is and I'm none the wiser. Did I pass?!
If you really want to know more about Blockchain, send me some bitcoin, I'll give it a look and tell you.
Kidding, here's a list of good articles here: dev.to/search?q=Blockchain
Who are the cool kids?
I was listening until you wrote Java and Python. A little googling shows they are in the top 3 of all surveys and have been so for some time, and went up over the last year.
Well, I'm not actually basing this on the surveys, which are better indicators of industrial prominence than they are of fads (thank goodness). A lot of what I wrote about in this article (which is over a year old, mind you) was based on conversations I was encountering in the programming world. I was actually hearing a lot of "Python? Bah - use Haskell" at the time. That has since switched. I think Haskell fell out of fad status for the moment.
You are correct that Python and Java are very common languages, but when I wrote this, they weren't necessarily the trendy languages. Python has had a bit of a recent resurgence in fad-popularity in the past year, especially in the data sciences. Once again, everyone wants to build everything in Python.
Meanwhile, Java continues to gain a reputation as slow and clunky. Even today, among the trendites, you're going to hear "don't use Java, use Go!" and such fad-based nonsense, and that's more my point.
I can't stress enough, fads aren't necessarily directly related to a language's industrial prominence...C++ has also been one of the top 5 languages for years, but it's NOT trendy by most assessments. That's exactly the point of the article: fads aren't actually rooted in anything more than the subjective obsession with the newest, shiniest toy.