Future systems will have many 10^9 number of elements, will deteriorate
constantly, while running extremely complex mission-critical applications.
(E.g. mobile agents, personal aircraft control, von Neumann probe control).
Hardware is going to be very different, as is going to be the coding
paradigm to meet these extreme challenges.
I have no doubt we are going to master them, but this incompatible with
keeping a very local view.
For many, a "computer" is a beige box with chips and card slots, a
keyboard, mouse, and CRT. "Developing software" is "edit- compile-test".
My, will some people be surprised one day.
ciao,
'gene