1 of 27

JavaScript Futurism

-Nader Dabit

2 of 27

Twitter

Medium

Github

dabit3

3 of 27

4 of 27

Futurism

A style of art, literature, music, etc., and a theory of art and life in which violence, power, speed, mechanization or machines, and hostility to the past or to traditional forms of expression were advocated or portrayed.

5 of 27

Futurism / Futurology / Futures Studies / etc...

An obsession with what the future looks like, & how it will affect social, economic, technological, and political structures and ecosystems.

“

6 of 27

Futurist

A person who studies the future and makes predictions about it based on current trends.

Gerd Leonhard

Dr. Amy Zalman

Michio Kaku

Ray Kurzweil

7 of 27

why?

And what does this have to do with JavaScript or React Native

8 of 27

Leland, Mississippi

Corner of 4th and Main Streets

9 of 27

Mississippi ranks last or second to last in:

Median Family Income

Percent of People Who Have Completed High School (Including Equivalency)

Best States to Live

Children Ages 0-5 Who Are Read To Every Day

Health Index

Physical exercise

Best Educated Index

Personal income (per capita)

10 of 27

Accurately predicting trends can dramatically improve chances of success and lift people out of poverty.

11 of 27

Hacks to peer into future do exist

12 of 27

Before the connected age, so even like 20 or so years ago, it was extremely difficult to connect and mentor from the top innovators / thinkers in a given field…

13 of 27

Of course these innovators and world class thinkers have always been around.

14 of 27

Today it is not like that.. As everyone knows, we are connected..

15 of 27

If you can identify the top innovators / thinkers in a given field that you would like to excel in or be a part of, follow these people and latch on to what they are doing, you can (sorta kinda) predict the future.

Theory

16 of 27

Critical Mass

How do projects / ideas achieve critical mass?

I think what we’ve all seen lately makes it pretty apparent…

When a large company, such as Google or Facebook, starts spending money adopting, creating and / or maintaining an open source project or new programming language, it is much more likely to succeed…

There are of course many reasons behind this, the main ones being

Many times these large companies are building internal products that depend on these technologies, so we know they are more likely maintain and iterate vs another similar project that does not have the same backing
Developers have some trust when a large respectable company spends it’s money and developer time maintaining an open source project

The same goes with someone with a an existing large audience / network

17 of 27

Equation for bet

Innovative people working on cutting edge tech +

Large respected company backing / commitment + Currently being used in critical / valuable situations and or growing companies

18 of 27

19 of 27

Observations / questions in 2012

With the increased speed of internet connections, web applications were going to become more and more popular vs traditional desktop applications.
Programming is hard
Demand is increasing faster than supply
Do I want to build something or provide a service as a developer?
JavaScript is moving quickly, many companies I looked at and talked with did not require a formal education
Programming seemed to be a results driven field

20 of 27

Observations / questions in 2017

Mobile is still the dominant user interface

web / hybrid / native interfaces still competing
No clear winner **yet**

Traditional Platforms

21 of 27

Observations / questions in 2017

Augmented Reality / Virtual Reality will be in demand
Voice / Bots

Emerging

Platforms

22 of 27

Observations / questions in 2017

Machine Learning / AI / Data Science expanding with tons of opportunity

Possibly unrecognized value in the application of ML /AI, i.e. as a service

Get started with SciKit, and accomplish 90% of ML tasks and it’s easier to pick up than things like TensorFlow
Python is the way to go right now IMO

Rapidly Expanding Segments

23 of 27

Observations / questions in 2017

The end of cloud computing

Future IOT will create a massive amount of decentralized data centers

a16z

prediction

24 of 27

One way to do predict the future is to subtract something that is important today, and fill it with something else.

-Peter Levine A16z

25 of 27

Observations / questions in 2017

Most JS is already compiled, meaning we are not all writing the same “language” anymore
Since we are not really writing JS anymore anyway and will be compiling, why write JS at all?
Either JS will continue to evolve and dominate, or a compile to JS language will “win” and we will see a huge shift to a single language (examples being Reason / Bucklescript, Dart, Elm)
JavaScript isn’t going away anytime soon

Languages / syntax

26 of 27

Death of JavaScript

When we can target as many platforms with another better language

When the web as we know it dies, possibly with the birth of another platform (VR/ AR)

27 of 27

Ramallah, Palestine

You can find me at @dabit3 & dabit3@gmail.com