I guess this may apply to desktop/laptop development in general, but I'm more interested specifically in WPF, and WPF is, as far as I can see, the best choice for newly made desktop/laptop applications in Windows..
Anyways, I know people talk about computing moving away from laptop/desktop applications to web sites/cell phone applications, etc... But I am skeptical as to whether laptop/desktop applications will really be phased out altogether. It seems with the structure of web based languages and how browsers display content, and the limitations to web pages vs desktop/laptop applications, there are still many advantages to developing desktop/laptop, and it would seem to me that this would continue for quite a while. My feeling is that no one really knows, sure you could say eventually desktop/laptop non web applications will be phased out, but I feel like no one can really predict the future for sure, some may have a good idea and turn out to be correct, but in the end no one really knows when this will happen, who knows - technology may come to a screaming halt because of natural disasters before we get to that point. For instance, some people are still using radios, which according to the best of my knowledge, were invented about 100 years ago, and most people in the developed world (I don't know if you can say "most" when you're talking about the third world) are using televisions, which were invented about 60 years ago. What do other people think about this? (Not the technology coming to a screaming halt, that's another issue, I'm talking about how long WPF will last, will there continue to be enough job possibilities for WPF developers, etc..) Consider the idea that it's too risky to go into WPF because there won't be enough jobs in it when everything has gone internet/cell/ or whatever else is around in the future.. Is this idea a legitimate claim to deter people from going into WPF or other desktop/laptop programming, or are there still a lot of reasons to go into such kinds of programming that outweigh the possibility of this kind of programming being phased out in the future?
I know there's no correct answer to this, but I would like to hear other programmers thoughts and opinions on this issue.