Ruby on Rails Won't Make It in 2007 and Forget About AJAX

Yakov Fain's Java Blog

We are approaching 2007and  I'll try to predict what's going to happen in the IT world.

1. Open sourcing Java won't matter - it's a non-event.

2. Ruby and Ruby on Rails won't make it in 2007 either. I still do not see a compelling reason to switch.

3. AJAX hype is stronger than I thought mainly because of the life support offered by frameworks like GWT. But still, I'm not going to recommend enterprise IT shops make any serious investments in AJAX.

4. We are going to see some interesting competition in the RIA arena between Adobe's Flex and Microsoft's WPF/E. Adobe has more mature technology, while Microsoft is an established player among enterprise developers. I won't be surprised if Adobe will dramatically drop the licensing fees for their Flex Data Services.

5. Java remains the best choice for server-side enterprise development, but it won't be able to compete on the desktop.

6. IT outsourcing remains a part of our lives despite (or because of) the poor management by American corporate IT staff, and the reason is not the lower labor cost of overseas programmers, but the absence of programmers in the USA.

7. The switch from plain stateless text-based to rich Internet applications will slowly continue. But it's not that easy to get rid of  those annoying but familiar habits of dealing with one-page-at-a-time applications. The fight for the Back button on the Web browser will continue

8. I'm not going to be able to afford an early retirement. Let me go and buy this lottery ticket for tonight's mega millions...