hey guys how you doing I'm Uncle Steph so today I'm going to talk about my predictions for 2025 what will happen in the software development coding world are we going to have World War III are we going to have ai domination and destruction are we going to go into a Mad Max apocalypse and other good stuff like that well the good news is Ruby will still be a very marginal language so you don't have to worry about Ruby I think what you have to do is you have to look at the big demographic changes so
that means you got lots of Boomers who are retiring looking for second jobs looking to start new businesses and so there's going to be a need for a lot of small website development uh small web professional not small small jobs for web professionals so that could be software development building uh simple websites WordPress uh not so much Drupal integrating PayPal stripe other payment processors coming up with a CO hesive web design and development strategy for small business so why do I emphasize small business because small business means a certain type of development the important thing
here is that we're not not going to be having to deal with Ruby that's very important first and foremost so it's a certain type of develop which means not so much C++ not so much Swift not so much python it's all going to be about the web front end back end and both ends you want to work both ends optimally uh if you work both ends then you're going to have maximum penetration into the market that's for sure so we're looking at HTML 5 css3 uh JavaScript not so much react not so much view actually
much more probable that you're going to be leveraging things like jQuery bootstrap for layout that's Small Business Development that's what it's about the 800 lb uh elephant in the room of course is PHP if you're doing Small Business Development PHP is going to come in handy quite a bit why PHP well because of Wordpress Drupal uh because there's already a huge investment in the small business Community Visa uh PHP it's just the way it is so uh you have to think about all those hundreds of thousands millions and millions of websites that have been developed
since the 90s A lot of them are stagnant a lot of them are going to be up need to be updated and they got PHP they got WordPress so it's like it's very likely that you're going to be using PHP and the web stack again what I'm talking about here for 2025 is market share I'm talking about probability of where the business is going to be uh it's not about the technological advantages or disadvantages as in Ruby it's not about the technological advantages or disadvantages of a particular technology you have to as a mature professional
developer you have to learn to be language technology neutral or agnostic not care about one or the other so in my career as a professional developer going back to the 1990s I became a better developer a mature developer a professional developer when I let go of I'm a Java developer I used to think hey I'm a Java developer that's what I'm going to do I'm going to just code in Java because Java's the best God damn it I got my framework that I built in Java I'm highly productive in Java and that's all I'm going
to do is Java when I let that go when I learned to let that go I uh became a far more productive a far more profitable and a far more advanced developer because what I found much to my great surprise that whatever language or technology I would leverage uh there was a certain advantage to it and disadvantage to it so even though I was pretty much a staunch Java developer as I said with my own framework and so forth uh when I jumped into PHP for the first time this is lousy PHP 3.0 PHP garbage
compared to what it is today today so you know uh PHP is an Enterprise level language has all the capabilities as a c as a Java as a python Etc as a JavaScript the differences between the languages these days in terms of uh their abilities and productivity and so forth they're all pretty much the same except for Ruby so as long as you avoid Ruby it doesn't really matter what language you use what you have to do is you have to mature yourself as a developer and you have to look at the languages as Tools
in your tool belt and you'll use whatever language makes sense for the job yeah so for 2025 I think there's going to be a lot more opportunity for small business development which of course as I said earlier means WordPress means PHP means web stack become flexible that way become flexible that way uh the desire to go work for the fangs like the Googles and the apples and the Amazon that used to be a thing like I don't know four or five years ago everybody wanted to work for the fangs I've had people who trained with
me went and worked for fangs people are starting to realize that they may not be the bees needs it may not be the best thing since sliced bread to go work for a Fang typically Fang jobs I think they last typically for an individual about two years two and a half years so you make 500,000 a year for two years and then you're burnt in my opinion as an ancient crusty nerd with uh only a little bit of hair left my opinion is that you concentrate on building up your skill sets becoming super valuable and
that means being very flexible in what you know what you can do and I would suggest getting it to freelance or contract work maximum earning potential in that regard and also better lifestyle that's what I did now if you're wondering if you should take me seriously or not just keep in mind that when I started developing I used to have hair down to the back the back of my ass I used to have super long hair so uh the reason I lost all my hair as a developers because I actually for a short stint of
time I actually started writing Ruby code now I can't say that the Ruby caused my hair loss but I'll just say this I had lots of hair wrote some Ruby no hair so between the time I had lots of hair and no hair I was writing Ruby code so you know so for 2025 was we're talking Small Business Development web development being Nimble being agile being technology agnostic in my career as a freelancer I found myself using all kinds of different languages and some weird stuff depending on the needs of the job and when you
hit that level where you're truly a pro you will let go of the need to identify as a particular type of developer you'll just be a pro developer Pro developer can approach anything yes you're going to have your likes and dislikes in terms of what you like to do what you don't like to do uh I'm not a big fan of lowlevel code personally I could do it but I'm not a fan of it so one of the great things about being a freelancer contractor once you've established yourself you can choose what technologies you want
to work with you can choose your clients you can fire clients firing clients by the way is one of the greatest gifts to humanity and you're able to fire clients when you become super valuable in terms of your skills when you've developed a lot of uh capability uh excuse me when you developed a lot of contracts you develop a lot of um what's the word looking for a lot of contacts in the business world so if people come to know you and they come to trust you so guard your reputation I was actually talking to
somebody in a consult recently one of my uh mentoring uh one of my mentees in the mentoring program links below and this is a professional developer has a high-paying job and was offered another high-paying job and one of the key factors in deciding whether or not to try to do two jobs at the same time and double end it one of the big factors was reputation guarding and reputation building that's one of the things that you have to understand it's very important as you're as you grow in your career whether your corporate career or freelance
or Contracting career or just starting businesses guard your reputation your reputation is very valuable because when you have a good reputation you'll have all kinds of opportunity when you have a bad reputation uh you'll burn more and more bridges and people w want won't want to work with you so there you go if you want to succeed in 2025 keep leveling up your skills think light and Nimbo one thing if you do freelance work for small business you're also going to have to uh broaden your skill stack broaden your range a little bit so you
may have to go full stack as opposed to just front end or just back in but yeah 100% you have to go full stack it's not that hard by way it's not that hard you're going to be mostly working with uh relational databases MySQL if anything you're going to be working with PHP HML css3 maybe some jQuery some bootstrap doesn't matter don't be a purist when it comes to Tech Cu uh the Purity Doctrine changes over time I remember back in 2007 when the world went absolutely insane they went insane and Ruby was on the
ascent I was one of the few voices in the time uh stirring up the pot telling people that Ruby was gonna get trounced by PHP and PHP without Outlast Ruby and here we go here we go yeah so that's the trend light Nimbo small business broader range of skills look to do some full stack uh learn to to do things learn about excuse me social media Integrations maybe newsletter Integrations think about what if you were a small business owner you owned independent coffee shop Independent Auto Shop a small construction company and they want to get
their information out there they want to get their uh their message out on the web to generate business what are they going to need they're going to need a nice light Nimble website it has to look good they're going to need uh perhaps uh social media integration maybe newsletter Integrations just having a broad set of skills like this again coding is huge the last question I'm going to address is of course AI is AI is AI going to destroy uh the development world one of the biggest problems we have these days about the webs we
have a lot of people out there who claim to know what they're talking about but they don't so one of the claims some people are making is that AI is going to destroy the development world over the next couple years not true not true what happens you have Juniors or noobs or Pretenders and they see the AI generate code writing the boilet plate code and because they're noobs they freak out right oh my God it's writing all that code I guess we don't need coders if you're Nob watching this I'm telling you coding the coding
the actual coding is a small part of the process a big part of a developer is to figure out all the different pieces to make choices about technology uses the easy the low hanging through is don't use Ruby but beyond that there's a lot of other decisions that have to be made and uh so that's a big part of the job all us all that configuration could be simple things like what kind of Hosting do you choose right do you go AWS or Azure something big cloud like that or do you go with just shared
hosting or do you go with VPS you know there's all kinds of different levels that's a decision that may has to be made based on the needs of the client by the way for 99.9% of us shared hosting or private VPS is much more than enough you don't need need the capability of AWS or Azure or something like that which can give you a big gotcha in the sense that some people will put their stuff on AWS or Azure where you're paying via the hits by via the traffic and you can get a huge bill
whereas you put yourself on a PIV VPS or shared hosting where the bandwidth is unmetered unlimited essentially you don't have that you don't have that worry you don't have that headache anyway there you go if you have any questions or disagreement about anything please put them in the comments below and I may answer but I may not so uh I'll give you last few bits of advice for 2024 from crusty old nerd most people make it in this life because of a few things number one they have emotional discipline emotional control number two they keep
upping their skills keep Upp ing your skills number three they build and guard and protect their reputation number four they live below their means if you make 50,000 a year you should spend no more than 40,000 a year if you make a 200,000 a year you should spend no more than 120,000 a year something like that right try to save a lot try to be disciplined about that and the final thing which nobody talks about in the tech channels you got to keep yourself healthy you got to keep yourself in shape you do that it
has a huge impact in all aspects of your life so exercise every day eat natural food healthy foods uh that's huge that's huge if you're in shape you exercise daily you eat H healthy natural foods your cognitive capacity the supercomputer you have between your ears will become much more performant so uh if you want to work at maximum Peak efficiency you want to have a lot of energy you want lot you want to have a lot of brain power stay healthy mind and body they are one in the same Healthy Mind healthy body healthy body
healthy mind so there that's my advice I hope you found it useful trust me uh you may be young listening to this and the subtlety the effects of bad diet and lifestyle may not be as apparent to you CU you're still young and full of piss and vinegar but uh it creeps up on you and over time so why not invest in yourself I mentioned leing living below your means saving saving especially if you get into freelance you want to make sure you have a bunch of emergency money saved up I say at least 6
months to a year preferably a year to two years if you're freelancing or Contracting this way trust me when you don't have to worry about paying any bills for a year or two years you take a huge amount of pressure off of yourself you become a far more uh you become far more powerful in your ability to negotiate contracts and deals with people make you're able to choose more selectively about what type of work that you do so yes you want to uh uh get yourself into Financial order you want to get your health in
order you want to have the well this follow criteria I talked about and if you do anything just avoid Ruby [Music] oh [Music]
