Tides ebb and flow. Pendulums swing. Ideas come and go, especially in programming, where the technologies and techniques for creating software continuously evolve.
Some programming languages, libraries, platforms, and tools become hot and irresistible. When they’re mentioned, everyone at the planning meeting jumps on the table and cheers. Others lose steam or fall from favor, drawing sighs or blank looks. Everyone stares at their shoes. Maybe they were impossibly hot just last week, but that was then and this is now.
In the interest of advancing the art, here is a list of trends we’ve noticed. They’re arranged in pairs because often the rise of one approach goes hand in hand with the fall of another. As a wise philosopher once wrote, “For every thing that is given, something is taken.” For every yin, there’s a yang.