Looking back to 2004 and wondering about the future
I really need to post a lot more. I have got it the habit of reading more than writing. 2004 was a strange year. It was a year where many people in IT serious started wondering whether they had a career that would take them through to retirement or even through the next few years. In terms of software development it was a time where projects where increasingly developed in lower cost countries and where business analysis and project managment skills became more and more important than being able to develop software.
IT is becoming a service, so stuff like ITIL becomes more and more important. I suppose I entered computing because it was a creative process where at the end of a project you had created something new. Now more and more the work is in managing IT services, managing servers, running helpdesks and managing third parties. For me it becomes less and less a creative process and more and more a job of managing widgits. A victim of our success ? People now take a lot in IT for granted, so everyone wants it cheaper. If it is good enough why do we need you IT guys. We never understood what you did anyway.
At the end of 2003 I went to the PDC in LA, it was an interesting event and it was great to meet all the people. I have been to many PDC's but for me the last 2 were interesting. The previous PDC was about .Net myservices. A project that was canned soon after. The last PDC was about Longhorn. With the continual changes to Longhorn and especially to WinFS was it worth attending. I know the PDC's are about new technology but it is hard sell to say I will travel all that way to hear about something that might or probably will not ship at some point in the future and by the way all the content will be on the web a few weeks after the event.
How do you all look back on 2004 and what excites you about 2005 ?
Happy new year
Martin