What was the "Next Big Thing" when you started programming?
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Inspired by this SO thread, What was "the next big thing" when you guys started programming? I remember a couple things in college: -Java was big. Write once, run anywhere...people believed it. -There was some interest in, and lots of articles about, Microsoft's new version of COM+, which they named DotNet. Oh, and some interest in the Java copycat they called C#. -I distinctly remember my college textbooks claiming "natural languages" would be the future of programming. -To prepare me for the future, my college taught us Fortran and C. The closest thing I've come to utilizing either of these is the rare piece of C++ code I have to deal with on contracting gigs.
Religiously blogging on the intarwebs since the early 21st century: Kineti L'Tziyon
Judah Himango -
Inspired by this SO thread, What was "the next big thing" when you guys started programming? I remember a couple things in college: -Java was big. Write once, run anywhere...people believed it. -There was some interest in, and lots of articles about, Microsoft's new version of COM+, which they named DotNet. Oh, and some interest in the Java copycat they called C#. -I distinctly remember my college textbooks claiming "natural languages" would be the future of programming. -To prepare me for the future, my college taught us Fortran and C. The closest thing I've come to utilizing either of these is the rare piece of C++ code I have to deal with on contracting gigs.
Religiously blogging on the intarwebs since the early 21st century: Kineti L'Tziyon
Judah HimangoWow! In my second year as a CS major, Popular Electronics had a picture of the MITS Altair on the cover. When I saw that, I knew right then to change direction and not put so much emphasis into programming mainframes with punched cards. And consequently, I was much further ahead of most people waking up to the micro revolution. I was really surprised that it took the industry so long to realize the benefit of the personal/individual computer. The only reason I'm not filthy rich, is that I was a drunken horndog and an immature dork (much like most of my contemporaries). I let probably 10+ fantastic opportunities to really make it big, just slide right through my fingers. I certainly helped a lot of other people get rich, but I made such horrible decisions when it came to my own ideas and work.
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Wow! In my second year as a CS major, Popular Electronics had a picture of the MITS Altair on the cover. When I saw that, I knew right then to change direction and not put so much emphasis into programming mainframes with punched cards. And consequently, I was much further ahead of most people waking up to the micro revolution. I was really surprised that it took the industry so long to realize the benefit of the personal/individual computer. The only reason I'm not filthy rich, is that I was a drunken horndog and an immature dork (much like most of my contemporaries). I let probably 10+ fantastic opportunities to really make it big, just slide right through my fingers. I certainly helped a lot of other people get rich, but I made such horrible decisions when it came to my own ideas and work.
Larry G. Grimes wrote:
The only reason I'm not filthy rich, is that I was a drunken horndog and an immature dork (much like most of my contemporaries). I let probably 10+ fantastic opportunities to really make it big, just slide right through my fingers. I certainly helped a lot of other people get rich, but I made such horrible decisions when it came to my own ideas and work.
Well, maybe it's a good thing, then, that you didn't get rich; it would likely have only promoted the horndoginess of your youth. :)
Religiously blogging on the intarwebs since the early 21st century: Kineti L'Tziyon
Judah Himango -
Larry G. Grimes wrote:
The only reason I'm not filthy rich, is that I was a drunken horndog and an immature dork (much like most of my contemporaries). I let probably 10+ fantastic opportunities to really make it big, just slide right through my fingers. I certainly helped a lot of other people get rich, but I made such horrible decisions when it came to my own ideas and work.
Well, maybe it's a good thing, then, that you didn't get rich; it would likely have only promoted the horndoginess of your youth. :)
Religiously blogging on the intarwebs since the early 21st century: Kineti L'Tziyon
Judah HimangoYou're right. I'm actually pretty lucky I didn't make it so big. One of my earlier associates was George Tate, one of the founders of Ashton-Tate of dBase fame. George died at 40, in 1983 obviously due to complications from a lifestyle of excess. The last time I talked to him in 1982, he had just returned from a vacation in the Carribean and was boasting about how little sleep he got and how fun all the partying was.
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Inspired by this SO thread, What was "the next big thing" when you guys started programming? I remember a couple things in college: -Java was big. Write once, run anywhere...people believed it. -There was some interest in, and lots of articles about, Microsoft's new version of COM+, which they named DotNet. Oh, and some interest in the Java copycat they called C#. -I distinctly remember my college textbooks claiming "natural languages" would be the future of programming. -To prepare me for the future, my college taught us Fortran and C. The closest thing I've come to utilizing either of these is the rare piece of C++ code I have to deal with on contracting gigs.
Religiously blogging on the intarwebs since the early 21st century: Kineti L'Tziyon
Judah HimangoMy first programming course used punch cards for Fortran. Using terminals was big new stuff. Using a modem at 110 baud to work from home was amazing. A DECwriter going 1200 buad was just unbelievably fast. Java was coffee. Real languages were PL/C derivatives... ;P
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Inspired by this SO thread, What was "the next big thing" when you guys started programming? I remember a couple things in college: -Java was big. Write once, run anywhere...people believed it. -There was some interest in, and lots of articles about, Microsoft's new version of COM+, which they named DotNet. Oh, and some interest in the Java copycat they called C#. -I distinctly remember my college textbooks claiming "natural languages" would be the future of programming. -To prepare me for the future, my college taught us Fortran and C. The closest thing I've come to utilizing either of these is the rare piece of C++ code I have to deal with on contracting gigs.
Religiously blogging on the intarwebs since the early 21st century: Kineti L'Tziyon
Judah HimangoDigital Computing - I started using analog computers, use patch wires to creates integrators, adders, etc. Digital was fantastic, but at the time still to slow to model complex real time problems.
Melting Away www.deals-house.com www.innovative--concepts.com
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Inspired by this SO thread, What was "the next big thing" when you guys started programming? I remember a couple things in college: -Java was big. Write once, run anywhere...people believed it. -There was some interest in, and lots of articles about, Microsoft's new version of COM+, which they named DotNet. Oh, and some interest in the Java copycat they called C#. -I distinctly remember my college textbooks claiming "natural languages" would be the future of programming. -To prepare me for the future, my college taught us Fortran and C. The closest thing I've come to utilizing either of these is the rare piece of C++ code I have to deal with on contracting gigs.
Religiously blogging on the intarwebs since the early 21st century: Kineti L'Tziyon
Judah HimangoI'm very young in here! For me, the big thing was PHP and PHP ready-made tools (portals, forums).
Mohamed Meligy Senior Developer and Technical Speaker http://GuruStop.NET
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Youngun :) There was CGA, then MCGA, EGA, VGA, SVGA... And you probably know the rest. I remember working with 16 colors, aptly numbered 0 to 15 (After that it looped through the first 16, but flashing).
Proud to have finally moved to the A-Ark. Which one are you in?
Author of Guardians of Xen (Sci-Fi/Fantasy novel) -
Inspired by this SO thread, What was "the next big thing" when you guys started programming? I remember a couple things in college: -Java was big. Write once, run anywhere...people believed it. -There was some interest in, and lots of articles about, Microsoft's new version of COM+, which they named DotNet. Oh, and some interest in the Java copycat they called C#. -I distinctly remember my college textbooks claiming "natural languages" would be the future of programming. -To prepare me for the future, my college taught us Fortran and C. The closest thing I've come to utilizing either of these is the rare piece of C++ code I have to deal with on contracting gigs.
Religiously blogging on the intarwebs since the early 21st century: Kineti L'Tziyon
Judah HimangoMy first job was working on a machine called the GEC 2050[^]. This was an 8 bit minicomputer with up to a massive 64K of memory! The memory was magnetic core - made, if memory serves, by little old spanish ladies. The logic was TTL, and the peripherals were a hard drive, a teletype, a barrel line printer and a paper tape reader/punch. It was about the size of a refrigerator. So for me the next big things were: * Solid state memory (still only 64K though) * VDUs (those green screen CRT things with a keyboard) * VLSI (chips with more than just a few logic gates on them) * Multi-user operating systems
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Inspired by this SO thread, What was "the next big thing" when you guys started programming? I remember a couple things in college: -Java was big. Write once, run anywhere...people believed it. -There was some interest in, and lots of articles about, Microsoft's new version of COM+, which they named DotNet. Oh, and some interest in the Java copycat they called C#. -I distinctly remember my college textbooks claiming "natural languages" would be the future of programming. -To prepare me for the future, my college taught us Fortran and C. The closest thing I've come to utilizing either of these is the rare piece of C++ code I have to deal with on contracting gigs.
Religiously blogging on the intarwebs since the early 21st century: Kineti L'Tziyon
Judah HimangoThere was this new computer on the horizon: The IBM PC XT. Imagine my delight when I discovered it just flew along at a mind-boggling 4.7 megahertz. And that 8-megabyte hard drive! Why, we'd never need anything bigger than that, right?
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You're right. I'm actually pretty lucky I didn't make it so big. One of my earlier associates was George Tate, one of the founders of Ashton-Tate of dBase fame. George died at 40, in 1983 obviously due to complications from a lifestyle of excess. The last time I talked to him in 1982, he had just returned from a vacation in the Carribean and was boasting about how little sleep he got and how fun all the partying was.
Yep. There's a blessing in every curse. :)
Religiously blogging on the intarwebs since the early 21st century: Kineti L'Tziyon
Judah Himango -
Inspired by this SO thread, What was "the next big thing" when you guys started programming? I remember a couple things in college: -Java was big. Write once, run anywhere...people believed it. -There was some interest in, and lots of articles about, Microsoft's new version of COM+, which they named DotNet. Oh, and some interest in the Java copycat they called C#. -I distinctly remember my college textbooks claiming "natural languages" would be the future of programming. -To prepare me for the future, my college taught us Fortran and C. The closest thing I've come to utilizing either of these is the rare piece of C++ code I have to deal with on contracting gigs.
Religiously blogging on the intarwebs since the early 21st century: Kineti L'Tziyon
Judah Himango -
Inspired by this SO thread, What was "the next big thing" when you guys started programming? I remember a couple things in college: -Java was big. Write once, run anywhere...people believed it. -There was some interest in, and lots of articles about, Microsoft's new version of COM+, which they named DotNet. Oh, and some interest in the Java copycat they called C#. -I distinctly remember my college textbooks claiming "natural languages" would be the future of programming. -To prepare me for the future, my college taught us Fortran and C. The closest thing I've come to utilizing either of these is the rare piece of C++ code I have to deal with on contracting gigs.
Religiously blogging on the intarwebs since the early 21st century: Kineti L'Tziyon
Judah HimangoFor me it was Advanced Revelation (Arev for short) around 1990 or so. We trained night and day and on weekends for a month because the consulting company I worked for at the time was convinced it was going to supplant dBase, FoxPro and even SQL Server 6.5. None of us ever worked on a single billable project with it.
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My first programming course used punch cards for Fortran. Using terminals was big new stuff. Using a modem at 110 baud to work from home was amazing. A DECwriter going 1200 buad was just unbelievably fast. Java was coffee. Real languages were PL/C derivatives... ;P
A Decwriter was shear heaven -- a lot of people had to use the unbelievably horrible teletype.
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My first job was working on a machine called the GEC 2050[^]. This was an 8 bit minicomputer with up to a massive 64K of memory! The memory was magnetic core - made, if memory serves, by little old spanish ladies. The logic was TTL, and the peripherals were a hard drive, a teletype, a barrel line printer and a paper tape reader/punch. It was about the size of a refrigerator. So for me the next big things were: * Solid state memory (still only 64K though) * VDUs (those green screen CRT things with a keyboard) * VLSI (chips with more than just a few logic gates on them) * Multi-user operating systems
My first computer (an Imsai) had a whopping 4K! I had to wait and save another $400 so I could get another 4K and use Bill Gates 8K Basic. Try progamming where every character matters. You only use one or two character variable names and can't afford to document your source code!
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For me it was Advanced Revelation (Arev for short) around 1990 or so. We trained night and day and on weekends for a month because the consulting company I worked for at the time was convinced it was going to supplant dBase, FoxPro and even SQL Server 6.5. None of us ever worked on a single billable project with it.
In the mid to late 80's and early 90's a lot of people made a lot of money consulting with dBase and Lotus 1-2-3. Knowing Wordstar and especially WordPerfect was icing on the cake!
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My first computer (an Imsai) had a whopping 4K! I had to wait and save another $400 so I could get another 4K and use Bill Gates 8K Basic. Try progamming where every character matters. You only use one or two character variable names and can't afford to document your source code!
Eee 4k! We used to dream o' 'aving 4k! There were twenty four o' us living in shoebox in middle o' road...
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Eee 4k! We used to dream o' 'aving 4k! There were twenty four o' us living in shoebox in middle o' road...
You got a shoebox? How lucky is that? We got a potato sack!
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Hexadecimal. Seriously. :)
Boy! You ARE old! (lol?)
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Colour was the next big thing when I started programming although a lot of people couldn't really see the point in it :~ When I started programming commercially we were really into COM+, it was the answer to everything, apparently (it wasn't so much like .net as like remoting). What it really did for us was to add another point of failure and an extra layer of network bottleneck between the clients and so created applications that were much harder to debug than the Client Server they replaced. We also had Thin clients when NT4 Terminal Services edition came out, soon to be replaced by rich clients when .Net took over. There was XML, nothing makes an application run so badly as something that takes some data from a database creates an enormous xml document transforms that document repeatedly into other documents and then spouts out some xhtml at the end (but hey we only need 2 stored procs now) There's OOP for websites where we used to create massive hierarchies of objects so we could make one method call and then dispose of the objects only to create them again when the user clicked submit.
> Colour was the next big thing when I started programming although a lot of people couldn't really see the point in it I remember that was the big deal about the Apple II. It was the first relatively affordable personal system that had built-in color. Remember, games back then were text-only, like "Adventure". Why would you need color for a computer game? Also, remember that the first Macintosh was black-and-white. Steve Jobs was known for once saying, "There will never be a color Macintosh".