2018 Predictions

My 2018 predictions:

1. Thin WARs become mainstream. Packaging the infrastructure together with the business logic although only <1% changes is not reasonable in containerized environments and slow. Fast turnaround cycles are crucial for productivity. Developers infected with "Thin WAR" mindset thrive for Micro WARs with fast deployments. It is common in green field Java EE 7 projects to have WARs smaller than 1 MB.
2. Microservices become just another solution for a problem and not a general architecture. It is perfectly fine to deploy a single, small, WAR containing everything: a macroservice / microlith.
3. Serverless overuse: serverless architectures claim to safe costs and to simplify operations. This is not true for all use cases -- I expect first reports of failing serverless projects due additional implementation complexity and plumbing. However: combining "traditional" Thin WARs with serverless endpoints brings the best of both worlds together. Servers for the main load and functions for (infrequent) events.
4. OpenLiberty could become the killer Java EE 8 / Java 9 application server. Small, lightweight and with interesting production features.
5. SQL revival: Modern relational databases like e.g PostgreSQL will regain traction.
6. JMS revival: there is a lack of popular common messaging API in microservice context. JMS 2.0 is just an API and could be implemented by many messaging services. JMS API with a "funky" implementation could (should) gain traction.
7. I got the first requests about Java 9 modules within microservices. There should be a buzz around additional module complexity introduced with "premature modularization" in second half of 2018 (or earlier).
8. Fat Clients are back: Service Workers, Cache API, Progressive Web (Offline) Apps, IndexedDB, "offline first" encourage developers to put more and more logic on the client. This is exactly how Fat Client is defined.
9. The year of "UseThePlatform": more and more "enterprise" projects will move away from JavaScript frameworks to plain WebStandards. Frequent migrations are expensive and come with no additional value.
10. Server Side Rendering (SSR): server side rendering is a viable architecture for SPAs / PWAs. Java Server Pages have a bad name, but are a fast and capable serverside templating technology with great tool support.
11. Raise of WebComponents (v1): Custom Elements, Shadow DOM together with ES 6 are a viable alternative to JavaScript frameworks. The longer you wait, the leaner your application becomes.
12. Frameworks known from Java ecosystem like Vaadin Elements and Prime Elements become a popular WebComponent-compatible UI widget provider.
13. HTTP/2 and Webstandards will dramatically simplify the JavaScript build pipeline. No build is the best build.
14. JavaScript (ES 7+) will become more and more similar to Java. Now Java developers can become easily webapp developers with 20+ years experience :-)

My 2017 predictions were...