Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by Tommah 888 days ago
There are certain aspects of computing that will probably always be around. We'll always need fast compilers that generate fast code -- people don't want slow programs, and programmers don't want to wait for compiles to finish. Relational databases aren't disappearing anytime soon. And as we keep getting smaller and smaller devices, we'll keep shrinking things down, so we'll need new ways of representing and compressing data. The list goes on and on. If you can get comfortable with things like these, you'll always be useful to somebody.

(And yes, COBOL will be with us for many years to come. In the next century, we'll probably be emulating IBM mainframes on quantum computers.)