Is Software Development Dead?

It seems to me that there is a common theme, or meme, propagating in the background of developers’ mind as I keep reading how such and such technology is dead. Take for example the latest incarnation of this question asked by Zarar Siddiqi, Are JSPs Dead? I would suppose that JSPs are dead if Java was dead. But being pronounced dead by pundit engineers does not inflict Java alone. A few days ago Paul Graham made a uproar in technology circles by proclaiming that Microsoft is Dead and that Redmond rigor mortis was setting in on the software giant. Personally I think that Microsoft has soo much money in the bank that it won’t die that easy, they could just buy kidneys, patents and technology from whomever they want. But even with all that cash at hand someone asked on the Joel on Software forum if .NET was dead.

You can find premature obituaries not only for programming languages such as Python and Perl, but for the whole software industry.

Is “Free Software” Dead? No! Is commercial software dead? No! Is Enterprise Software Dead? No! No! No!

I feel that these questions are troll-level orange as they don’t help to answer any software questions or help in any design debate. These questions are not food for thought, but food for FUD. Just to answer your questions, Fortran is not dead, Perl still takes care of business, and Lisp is still alive and kicking.

JSP, and Microsoft, and all these technologies must be quoting Mark Twain right about now when he said, “The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.” Now, can we all just get back to coding?

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