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Editor's Note: This post was originally written as an entry in GigaOM's Optimism 2008 contest. Om Malik's assignment was: "Tell me, in 200 to 400 words, what you’re most optimistic about for 2008, and why." The writer of the winning entry received a Sonos Digital Music System. Rabble's post, which you can read below, came in second (runner-up). Rabble might still be optimistic about a Sonos system, so let him know if you have a spare.

Difficult question. I know what i’m excited about right now. It’s that cloud computing is becoming a reality. More specifically I’m really impressed and excited by lightweight key-pair databases like CouchDb and Thrudb. Amazon’s SimpleDB is interesting as endorsement of this idea of a database, but not as interesting technically. There are whole classes of applications which are hard to do using a relational database that will be easy to build and scale using key-pair style databases like CouchDb, Thrudb, and SimpleDB. Applications like delicious, twitter, facebook, and flickr are difficult to build on the backend due in large part to a poor match of database storage engines. With that fixed, and it seems like we’re finally getting around to fixing it, we’ll be able to push forward in building social apps which can scale while doing interesting things. Something that has been hard is going to become easy in 2008.

What else? The mobile handset world is going to be interesting. Apple will release an SDK that, if done the right way, will create a fountain of new applications. Android will come along and the creative of mobile apps will spread to more devices, but they won’t be as slick. The iPhone is the Mac of phones: Apple’s one device/one screen size/one interface system will be a massive win for building interesting applications. It remains to be seen if Android will become like Linux, with hackers doing cool stuff but not much end-user acceptance; or more like Windows, widespread but clunky because of the hundreds of devices which need to be supported; or cool like OS/2, but simply ignored out of existence.

I’m excited about computing and watching the net extend to non-computer devices. The dash navigation system is one example, chumby and Kindle are others, there are plenty more. So far they’ve had a hard time getting built and released. Hopefully, in 2008 the net will stop being about laptops, desktops, and servers. The iPhone is a stage along that path, but there’s so much more. Perhaps it’s too optimistic to hope for great new devices in 2008--building physical things requires much longer lead time. Eventually, the device makers will learn what the desktop application makers have learned: tying a device to the net means you can push updates onto it easily and be much more agile.

The last thing I’m excited about is maps. This isn’t new, map development has been going on for a while, but there are neat things happening with maps, geo, and location-based services. I hope there is enough space for people to build apps which are social and useful, rather than just marketer dreams (...yet another app to find the nearest Starbucks).

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There's a lot of value to learning new programming languages even if you can't use them in your day job. It helps you think about the problems you face differently. See a new perspective on solving problems.

The languages which are interesting to me are:

• D for a c++ like language
• lua for embedded oo scripting
• ruby for web development and automation
• erlang for concurrent and distributed programming
• ocaml for data processing

And smalltalk for knowing what the grandmaster poobahs did back in the day.

To keep your chops up, try learning a new language every year.

www.pragmaticprogrammer.com/loty/

(http://www.pragprog.com/articles/designing-learning )

Learning something new doesn't mean you're rejecting what you already know and do...

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