Okay, I’m dramatizing a little, but only for effect.

I would like to suggest that a few decades from now we will live in a much different (IT) world: one where code and data are ONE.

Imagine not (dead, passive) data being transmitted but (“living”) objects — i.e. “objects” as in OO programming, objects not just with data (as in JSON), but objects that include methods!

I deliberately allude to JSON, because JSON is Javascript, and Javascript is functional programming, functional programming is highly dynamic without the old separation of “compile time” vs. “run time”. It all fits together beautifully. Virtualization in the hardware and the software (OS), more and more dynamism in the languages… do you think DATA is going to stay behind and remain dead and passive as it is now, as it has always been throughout the history of information processing? Something that “is processed” — note the use of the passive voice whenever we talk about data!

No, data is going to come alive. Data is going to interact with one another by itself, data is going to “get a life”. Data and code/methods/whatever you call the “active” part are going to be one entity.

It won’t invalidate the separation of code and data, it is going to complement it. Data objects that are “alive” somehow are one  part, code processing those live objects is still going to exist. Letting data “speak and act for and by itself” is just an added option, but a HUGE one.

It’s like the step from Lego blocks to genetics. The first one is passive, someone has to assemble something out of them. The latter is “active data” — it starts assembling itself, organizing matter without any external machine or builder!

Thanks to Jürgen Geck for pointing out this coming development!