To me, the "web" (as in web developers), is really about UI programming (html), system communications protocols (e.g. XMPP, SOAP, HTTP), and data persistence (rdbms).
Earlier on (a decade ago), there seemed to be a lot of effort spent implementing these three aspects (many home grown libraries for these three parts). Now, each of these three aspects have many prepackaged frameworks to make things much easier. IMHO there's nothing fundamentally different in these protocols than their forefathers that ruled the systems in decades earlier.
I suspect there will be a transition to new UI mechanisms (virtual worlds), data persistence systems (note the recent rise in alternative databases), and protocols to support all of that (probably related to distributed computing and SOA).
Robotics seems ready to support a large influx of software developers. This field would almost certainly require a different architecture than the traditional 'web' system as the inputs and outputs and real-time aspects seem to be significantly different for this platform. Ergo more home grown solutions initially with frameworks and toolkits to follow.
Ultimately, I think it will be more about AI and higher level information architecture problems.
bsaunder's comment makes sense to me. Programmers from the 90s who wrote largely Windows desktop stuff had to reinvent themselves to be effective with the web and we can expect to have to do the same every few years. It's really not about Windows programming or web programming, it's about designing structures to store and expose information and that much isn't going to go away - there's only going to be more and more information. I don't see such a great growth in robotics but I'm perfectly prepared to be proven wrong in that. The line "Ultimately, I think it will be more about AI and higher level information architecture problems" strikes me as spot-on.
To me, the "web" (as in web developers), is really about UI programming (html), system communications protocols (e.g. XMPP, SOAP, HTTP), and data persistence (rdbms).
Earlier on (a decade ago), there seemed to be a lot of effort spent implementing these three aspects (many home grown libraries for these three parts). Now, each of these three aspects have many prepackaged frameworks to make things much easier. IMHO there's nothing fundamentally different in these protocols than their forefathers that ruled the systems in decades earlier.
I suspect there will be a transition to new UI mechanisms (virtual worlds), data persistence systems (note the recent rise in alternative databases), and protocols to support all of that (probably related to distributed computing and SOA).
Robotics seems ready to support a large influx of software developers. This field would almost certainly require a different architecture than the traditional 'web' system as the inputs and outputs and real-time aspects seem to be significantly different for this platform. Ergo more home grown solutions initially with frameworks and toolkits to follow.
Ultimately, I think it will be more about AI and higher level information architecture problems.