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by xenihn 1637 days ago
I think 50 years is way too long to plan ahead for. A ~9-12 year approach makes more sense. Look at these intervals:

1942 - First mass-produced fully-electric analog computer

1951 - First mass-produced commercial computer (using vacuum tubes)

1963 - First mass-produced integrated circuit mainframe computer

1974 - First mass-produced personal computer

1984 - First GUI operating system with widespread adoption

1995 - AOL, CompuServe, and Prodigy bring the internet to the masses

2007 - First smartphone with widespread adoption

~2017 - I'm actually having trouble coming up with something. Maybe cryptocurrency (specifically Ethereum) gaining widespread adoption, but it's too early to judge its significance. Same with VR.

The job market and what it meant to be a programmer changed so much between these intervals.

You might not even be in tech anymore in 11 years. Maybe you'll be retired after a lucky windfall. Or dead.

1 comments

2012 (if you move your date back a little) - Deep Learning. In 2012 CNN won the ImageNet competition by a wide margin. After that we have some amazing improvements in Speech to Text and machine translation.