Ivan Marsic • Rutgers University 304
with Home Depot, it works only for little things; after all, how many of us dare to replace kitchen cabinets, lest to mention building a skyscraper
Web services BPEL and programming workflows on a click 4GL and the demise of programming: “What happened to CASE and 4GL? My suspicion is that
we still use them to this day, but the terms themselves have fallen into such disregard that we rarely see them. And certainly, the hyped benefits were never achieved.”
The Future of Programming on the iSeries, Part 2 by Alex Woodie and Timothy Prickett Morgan
http:www.itjungle.comtfhtfh042803-story01.html Why assembler? by A. F. Kornelis
http:www.bixoft.nlenglishwhy.htm The Future of the Programmer; InformationWeeks Dec. 6 issue
http:blog.informationweek.com001855.html Application Development Trends Articles 522006: End-user programming in five minutes or
less ---- By John K. Waters Rod Smith, IBMs VP of Internet emerging technologies, chuckles at the phrase end-user
programming, a term he says has been overhyped and overpromised. And yet, IBMs new PHP- based QEDWiki project quick and easily done wiki is focused on that very concept.
QEDWiki is an IDE and framework designed to allow non-technical end users to develop so- called situational apps in less than five minutes. http:www.adtmag.comarticle.aspx?id=18460
Web 2.0: The New Guy at Work -- Do-it-yourself trend
http:www.businessweek.compremiumcontent06_25b3989072.htm ONLINE EXTRA: How to Harness the Power of Web 2.0
http:www.businessweek.compremiumcontent06_25b3989074.htm
9.6 The Business of Software
Chapter 9 • Some Future
Trends 305
Traditionally, software companies mostly made profits by product sales and license fees. Recently, there is a dramatic shift to services, such as annual maintenance payments that entitle
users to patches, minor upgrades, and often technical support. This shift has been especially pronounced among enterprise-software vendors. There are some exceptions. Product sales
continue to account for most of game-software revenues, although online-gaming service revenues are growing fast. Also, the revenues of platform companies such as Microsoft are still
dominated by product revenues.
A possible explanation for that the observed changes is that this is simply result of life-cycle dynamics, which is to say that the industry is in between platform transitions such as from
desktop to the Web platform, or from office-bound to mobile platforms. It may be also that a temporary plateau is reached and the industry is awaiting a major innovation to boost the product
revenue growth. If a major innovation occurs, the individuals and enterprises will start again buying new products, both hardware and software, in large numbers.
Another explanation is that the shift is part of a long-term trend and it is permanent for the foreseeable future. The argument for this option is that much software now is commoditized, just
like hardware, and prices will fall to zero or near zero for any kind of standardized product. In this scenario, the future is really free software, inexpensive software-as-a-service SaaS, or “free,
but not free” software, with some kind of indirect pricing model, like advertising—a Google-type of model.
An interested reader should see [Cusumano, 2008] for a detailed study of trends in software business.
9.7 Summary and Bibliographical Notes
306
Appe ndix A
J a va Progra m m ing
This appendix offers a very brief introduction to Java programming; I hope that most of my readers will not need this refresher. References to literature to find more details are given at the
end of this appendix.
A.1 Introduction to Java Programming
This review is designed to give the beginner the basics quickly. The reader interested in better understanding of Java programming should consult the following sources.
Bibliographical Notes
This is intended as a very brief introduction to Java and the interested reader should consult many excellent sources on Java. For example, [Eckel, 2003] is available online at
http:www.mindview.netBooks . Another great source is [Sun Microsystems, 2005], online at
http:java.sun.comdocsbookstutorialindex.html . More useful information on Java programming is
available at http:www.developer.com
Gamelan and http:www.javaworld.com
JavaWorld magazine.
