arithma wroteThis question is as hard to answer as is answering: "What is going on on the internet these days?"
Are you thinking of certain fields? Development for mobile devices? Enterprise Apps? Public facing apps (Web1.0-2.0->?)? HTML5? What is facebook doing these days?
Do you think that any programming language has ever taken the programming scene?
Well one thing in particular is interesting, the return of native language focus in Microsoft. Also the thinking of Javascript as THE scripting language for everything (WinRT/JS).
I particularly think that the most noticeable trends that will most likely continue and soar in 2012 are mobile application development, cloud computing and the increasing interest in Javascript and JS frameworks.
I've read somewhere that Silverlight & Flash might be dying off (particularly Flash) and HTML5 is likely to dominate in the coming years. To be honest, I felt like SL5 is going to be a huge success when it came out (like 2 weeks ago). Many of the limitations of SL4 were addressed in version 5. But the fact that it needs a plugin to run in the browser might hold back its adoption by developers and consumers alike. Moreover, since Silverlight is a .NET technology, it will only be adopted by .NET developers and those who are willing to move from their current language to the .NET world. On the other hand, HTML5/CSS/JS are independent of any language/technology which will definitely result in a much bigger adoption by developers. But the fact that SL runs inside a plugin is actually something that appeals to web developers who've had their share of cross-browser compatibility nightmares. Add to that the clean controls and the graphical and animation capabilities that are provided by SL.
So I really cannot predict what's going to dominate the development scene in 2012 and the years to come (at least in the .NET world). But as I said previously, you cannot go wrong with developing for the cloud and mobile applications. So I believe it would be worth investing your time and efforts in those platforms.