2015 Year in Review

Here's my take on tech trends in 2015 and predictions for 2016.

Personal trends in 2015.
  • I started using Twitter, following a mix of optimistic tech bloggers, economists and comic-book artists. Always something interesting to read. I don't tweet much. (Nothing to say :-P)
  • Podcasts. I'm following a bunch of tech, gamer, and comedy podcasts. I especially like The Voicemail, Accidental Tech Podcast, Melton, and Guys we F*cked (NSFW) .
  • I switched to a large-sized iPhone 6s+. The big screen is great.
  • I stopped maintaining my "Terminal Emulator for Android" program, because I lost interest in the idea of an on-device terminal emulator for Android. (And I lost interest in maintaining the project in the face of frequent Android UX and build system churn.)

Open Source

I've been doing less open-source software work than in previous years. My OSS work has been driven by emotion and "hack value". This year I haven't come up with any ideas that were exciting enough to work on. Partly this is because we're in the midst of a change from PCs to mobile, and it's not clear to me what needs to be done in the new mobile-first world. And partly it's because things are working pretty well. I feel that I have my basic computing needs taken care of by existing apps.

More than once this year, I came up with an idea for a project, only to find a perfectly serviceable implementation already available for free or only a few dollars. Each time I installed the existing app rather than writing my own version.

Video Games

I found myself playing fewer video games. I bought lots of mobile games, but mostly for my family rather than for myself. My wife briefly held the world record high score for the puzzle game Spl-t.

I'm still waiting for The Witness and The Last Guardian to ship. I may buy a PS4 to play TLG. Or I may just watch the inevitable "Let's Play" walkthroughs. It seems like the kind of game that would be almost as much fun to watch someone else play as to play myself.

Hardware

I bought an Apple TV 4th Gen and an Apple iPad Pro. I'm using both primarily for media consumption, although once I obtain an Apple Pencil I hope to use the iPad Pro for some sketching.

I had hoped to write games for the Apple TV, but the bundled controller is too limited to support interesting games. And the development model is clunky, requiring either two Apple TV units, or a long cable. I think it makes more sense to concentrate on iPhone/iPad apps than Apple TV apps.

Computer Languages

I'm studying Swift, trying to decide if it's good or not. It's a positive sign that Apple open sourced it. I like the "Playground" feature.

I wish I could use Go more, but I don't currently have a project for which Go is suitable.

Similarly, I'm impressed by recent developments in Clojurescript. I wish I had a project idea for which Clojurescript was suitable.

2016 Trends

  • Mobile
  • VR
  • Machine Learning

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