Pay as you go is really going to make a difference

[Gregor Mückl]

On Thursday, 16 January 2020 at 14:03:15 UTC, Martin Tschierschke 
wrote:
> But maybe I am wrong and the next generation of software 
> engineers will bring the gain of Moors Law to us. (And the 
> resources needed for computing world wide will stop increasing.)

It is especially the current young generation of coders that gets 
socialized with HTML+JS "GUIs" (yup, scare quotes!) and "apps" 
that are just services on somebody else's server.

There's just so many incentives pointing the wrong way:

- Cloud providers want to lock their customers in (Google, 
Amazon, MS)
- Software developers see how they can squeeze juicy subscription 
fees out of their customers when they don't sell installable 
software, but run it as a service
- Commercial users see shiny presentations that tell them that 
not running their software in-house is so much cheaper (and it's 
likely true until they lose access to their data or a critical 
3rd party service falls over)

I only see a single chance to get out of this particular hole: 
completely new devices that are more desirable than PCs, tablets 
or smartphones and for which the web as it exists today makes 
absolutely no sense. I see one chance of this happening if 
everyday augmented reality matures in about 5 to 10 years - and 
that's still a pretty big if.