Cloud Computing and the REST of us

Cloud Computing as a buzzword is right up there with social networks, web 2.0, and everything else high technology. I have just begun to delve into researching these services, and I see a lot of potential, but I also have a hesitance that the final incarnation will not look anything like what we see now. I sincerly hope that cloud computing is not just vapor ware (pun intended). It has a possiblity of completly change the way software is hosted, and possibly even architected.

If you work for one the tech giants, or a SF start up your companies may already be creating applications in the cloud. As a web developer not on the bleeding edge this may mean something different. This will most likely serve as an option in the future for hosting larger applications, but I don’t think it will wipe out traditional hosting any time soon, just because I believe many companies would be hesitant to put their data out in a “cloud”. As a developer on the ground level I think we will start to see the cloud producing content delivery services, and scalable web services that are reliable and USABLE. Once we have useful services, they can be integrated into our applications without the risk many services have today. We may even see new languages and programming styles emerge to fit the paradigm, and that will filter back into main stream development. So I probably won’t be programming in “C flat++” or “Anaconda”, or “IronSaphire” any time soon, but we may see the concepts and ideas filter back to plain old boring VB, and C#. I believe we will also see a move away from efficient nit picking in development. If you start working in an environment where processor and ram are cheap and on demand, you probably won’t want to spend three days optimizing a single sort procedure, becuase it would not yeild any real ROI, and infact probably the opposite.

I do believe that this won’t throw traditional programming practices out the window. As a programmer moving into the new realm of highly distributed computing, the fundamentals will be even more important. If a bug exists in single threaded system it only exists once, if a bug exists in a highly distributed system, it could exist a thousand times, and this will require us to be even more dilligent. We will also encounter new types of bugs that exist, because of distributed enviornments.

The discussion has already be started on the bleeding edge of the software community, and it will beging to become more mainstream. The developers on the ground may start to see changes, in how they do things. We will have more options on using third party services in developing their software. We will also be expected to make our applications available as a service for the companies we work with. API style programming will need to become second nature.

This all rehash of the idea that all computers do is input data, output data, and compute data, nothing more. The major change this time around is it will be done on a massive scale. So when I create my widget processing service, it will be able as many widgets as needed, and I never have to worry about machines, and bandwidth, becuase it will now be available, and scale on demand.

Bookmark It

Post a Comment

Twitter Feed