How accurate were the forecasts for 2024?

VORtech develops computational software, both for and with clients. Much of this software is used to forecast something. From water levels to traffic flows, from the growth of sustainable energy sources to emissions from chemical processes. But not every forecast can be computed. Sometimes, it just takes human intuition. To close the year 2023, we thought it would be interesting to see if humans can collectively make good forecasts for a number of topics in our field without computing:

• The Python programming language. This language has become the most popular programming language, scoring 13,86% in the TIOBE index in November 2023. It is also used for complex computations and machine learning.  Would this language grow further or would another language eat into its market share?
• Earth Overshoot Day is the day of the year at which humanity has used more resources than the earth can provide in that year. This day has come much earlier in the year over the past decades. In 2023, it was on August 2. As a company, we hope to contribute to a more sustainable society by using advanced computing. What will the date of Earth Overshoot Day be in 2024?
• The European exascale supercomputer that will be installed in Germany this year promises to be one of the most powerful computers in the world. It will be able to do more than a trillion computations per second. But the race is still open as other countries are also working on extremely fast computers. Will this European supercomputer make it to the top of the ranking?

Below, we will show how our relations felt about each of these questions. At this moment, we already know the answer to the first one.

The popularity of Python

Our relations expected that the popularity of Python would increase further to more than to 14%. On May 1st, the actual number is 16,33%. This means that the expectation of most of our relations was correct. Even though there was an error in the category bounds, that doesn’t have any effect on the outcome: the category 14%-15% does not cover the actual number.

The growth of Python is remarkable. In just four months it has grown by some 2.5%. Historically, Python has been growing in popularity since 2018. This is surely related to the advances in data science and machine learning, for which Python is mostly the language of choice.  But Python is used for other applications as well now that ever more people are becoming familiar with it. The popularity of Python, in turn, also leads to more people wanting to learn the language. VORtech regularly provides Python trainings, both on basic and advanced level. It’s great fun to do this. Our colleagues are very familiar with Python, follow the developments closely and like to share their knowledge. Feel free to contact us if you are interested in an inhouse Python training.

Another remarkable feature of the Tiobe-index of May is that Fortran is back in the top 10. This is probably due to the increased importance of computational software, for which Fortran is still a very good language. VORtech also offers Fortran trainings as one of the few companies that still actively maintain and use knowledge of this programming language.

The date of Earth Overshoot Day

In some cases you just hope that your expectations will prove to be wrong. But sadly, our relations made the correct assessment of the expected Earth Overshoot Day 2024.  It turned out to be August 1st, so indeed before last year’s date of August 2^nd, as 90% of the contributors to our poll expected. Admittedly, there is a bit of luck involved here, as the date of Earth Overshoot Day is more or less stable in the past years, shifting a day or two up and down the calendar with each year.

Earth Overshoot Day is the day of the year when humanity has asked more of the earth than it can deliver in a year. So, any date before New Years Day means that we are eating into the earth’s finite resources. Clearly, this cannot go on indefinitely.

The fact that our relations expected that Earth Overshoot Day would be earlier than last year shows that they know that humanity is not doing great in countering the excess use of the earth’s resources. That goes especially for the rich countries: if all the world would live like the people in the Netherlands, Earth Overshoot Day would be on April 1^st.

As scientific software engineers, we can contribute by helping to develop the best possible software to assess the effect of measures that are contemplated by governments (or the lack thereof). The GEM-E3 model of the European Union and the IMAGE Integrated Model to Assess the Global Environment of the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency  are example of models that study the interaction between society, biosphere and climate.

VORtech made the decision to prioritize projects that contribute to a better world. If we can leverage our expertise and experience to shift Earth Overshoot Day in the right direction, we will certainly jump on the opportunity.

The ranking of the European Exascale Computer

The figure below shows that our relations are pretty confident that the European Exascale computer will be one of the ten fastest in the world. Fingers crossed for the actual ranking in November.