I'm definitely not suggesting holding your breath; it would be foolish to say "keyboard-less programming is just around the corner, so don't bother with your keyboard!" On the other hand, a confident prediction like:
> People will be programming computers for a very long time to come and they will, for the most part, be using a keyboard to do it.
(the keyboard part, at least) seems to be a sure route to some future "640K should be enough memory for anyone."
Indeed it is! We are all supposed to be living in a post PC world where everything we do, programming included, will be done on a tablet!
> (the keyboard part, at least) seems to be a sure route to some future "640K should be enough memory for anyone."
Heh. Ok. But is this the same thing really? I mean, how many forms of input are there? We've tried the obvious ones and the keyboard just sticks with us.
> Heh. Ok. But is this the same thing really? I mean, how many forms of input are there? We've tried the obvious ones and the keyboard just sticks with us.
I guess it's not the same thing in that it's at least obvious what one could do instead of a 640 KB limit (just install more memory), but I still think there might be some life to the analogy. I agree with you that there's no obvious substitute for the keyboard, but that to me says only that it is a local maximum—with a potential further global maximum to be discovered, probably not by obvious changes, and necessarily not by perturbations to what we have already—which might (or, I'll certainly grant, might not) be bettered.
I'm definitely not suggesting holding your breath; it would be foolish to say "keyboard-less programming is just around the corner, so don't bother with your keyboard!" On the other hand, a confident prediction like:
> People will be programming computers for a very long time to come and they will, for the most part, be using a keyboard to do it.
(the keyboard part, at least) seems to be a sure route to some future "640K should be enough memory for anyone."