The most striking talk in last week's Future of Web Apps conference in London (FOWA) was from Sun's Director of Web Technologies Tim Bray, well-known as a co-inventor of XML. On a day when the world's stock markets were in sharp decline, he tore up his talk and spoke instead on how developers can survive the coming recession.
His recipe for survival is as follows:
"It's got to be very cheap to deploy technology. In practical terms, that means open source software. I do not see much of a future for Enterprise software."
said Bray. I believe he overstates the case. Companies are not going to make major platform shifts because money is tight; they are more likely to play safe and stick with what they use now. Nevertheless, if you can choose between free and expensive, free is pretty attractive.
"The business benefits of going into the cloud, you only have to pay a little at the beginning, you don't pay anything serious until you see benefits, are going to look overwhelming."
The snag here is that like the rest of us, Bray hasn't figured out which cloud to go to, and is particularly wary of lock-in. Still, utility computing has obvious cost-cutting potential.
What if things get really bleak and a lot of us have time on our hands? Well, at least it is an opportunity for Java developers to learn PHP, or vice versa. Further, as Bray observed at FOWA, getting stuck into an open source project is a great way both to learn new skills and also to build your professional reputation. Never mind the CV; the first thing he does when evaluating a job application is a Google search.
Nobody knows how severe the downturn will be; Bray thinks it will be grim but admits he could be wrong. What is certain though is that the world will still need software development skills, and that the Internet will continue increasing in importance. If this is where your skills lie, that has to be a mitigating factor.
You can see highlights from Bray's talk here; and summarized on his blog.
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Good advice, but there are also some realities. Some thoughts from the perspective of an appdev tools vendor (me) who has to compete in this marketplace.
Go agile: Tastes great, less filling. The reality is, however, that some platforms are more alige than others. Until developers and IT dev teams are willing to and/or permitted to dispense with the "you don't get fired for buying Visual Studio" mentality, some teams going alige will be more agile than others. Ask yourself if your current platform encourages agile development. Ask yourself if other platforms might be more agile, intrinsically. Nobody seems to care about "RAD" anymore (do buzz analytics on RAD vs. AJAX; RAD barely registers). RAD is the original agile, where we expected more productivity from the tools, not just the methodology. When you pair RAD+agile methods, you're getting somewhere. Am I seeing this wrong?
Use open source: So on one hand Bray says to lose religion, but then he says be religious about open source. You can't have it both ways. Use the best tools for the job, whether they're commercial or free. Some commercial tools have high TCO/ROI, while others are very attractive in an environment like we have today--sometimes moreso than open source. You have to do a proper cost/benefit analysis of all the tools up for consideration, and not arbitrarily choose open source. Of course, I make this argument as a vendor of a commercial product, so you can choose to dismiss it. But keeping an open mind and always looking for the right tool for the job has never failed developers.
Go to the cloud: Religion again, but hard to argue with, if only due to the larger trend/movement of enterprise apps to the Web. So, build Web UIs, not desktop UIs. Use AJAX if you want rich UIs and reduced apparent database latency (as opposed to Flash or Silverlight, which require fat client apps and downloads). All of that said, again, beware of religion (including mine), consider the application requirement, do a cost/benefit analysis, and choose the right tools for the job. (For example, I know many developers in parts of the country where boradband simply isn't available. Web apps are not an option. Client-server still reigns.)
Lose your programming prejudices: Ditto. This is great advice. When it comes to openness, start with an open mind.