We built apps for the Windows platform. Prior, I had made a decent salary building mainframe apps. Microsoft standardization of a pc client/server platform led to corporate acceptance and smaller, faster, more agile and lower cost development and deployment, making it possible for a tiny company like ours to exist and thrive. So seeing one of the guys who helped start that transformation was inspiring. He’s not perfect, and didn’t invent all the stuff he gets credit for (and in fact practically stole some of it), but a lot of people have made a lot of money under the Microsoft umbrella. We’re retired, those days are mostly over now, and business/tech is in the middle of the next transformation. Which, ironically, Microsoft was late in adopting. Microsoft made IBM obsolete, cloud computing and open source will make Microsoft obsolete if they’re not careful.
Was not a tangent to me. Enjoyed hearing about it. It has been an interesting time period with the creation of personal computers, software, and early people like Peter Norton or Phillipe (sp?) Kahn who made money so young. It seemed more innocent and creative back then. I built websites for my kids when they were very young and had a bank of computers where we all worked together. They are all now in their careers, heavily reliant upon computers and my son deeply involved in application creation. A true tangent: After last winter, I learned that I should not ever consider retirement. I really am unskilled at leisure time. Unless God forces me to stop doing what i do, I would come to the office just to be here. I like the concept of “work.”
Many years ago, I wanted to move from beyond 640k of memory. I bought an Intel Above Board. You could use the memory above 640k to run an application (made here in town) called PC Shadow. (Then again, Dennis Hayes was here making modems). This allowed me to use a PC/AT as a server and dumb terminals to create a network. At that time, no practices had networks. I would print notes using PFS File and reports in WordPerfect. One thing that did evolve is that I do not have a curiosity about computers. They have become only tools, but I do miss the days/feeling of being intensely interested.
I think if someone likes to travel, wants to write, enjoys tennis and golf, and wants to buy things that were delayed by the rigors of work, retirement would be a joy. I have a friend who is at 70 building a large home on a large lake. Previously, he had vineyards and enjoys painting and sculpting. My brother in law closed his practice in his 50s so he could make jewelry and take history courses. There was a Twilight Zone episode as to how you suffer when you can have everything. Brilliantly conceived.
When we were first starting out, we had a Compaq luggable we could take on site when doing little custom apps in dBase ii for clients. We bought a “portable” external 10MB (yes, MB, not GB) hard drive. It was the size of a shoebox and cost $1800.
This thread is a rabbit hole that co go on for decades!
We had the original IBM “laptop” as well. floppy drive only. There was a young man a few miles from here who opened during IBMs boom (and the new IBM building here) and had a BestBuy sized store selling hardware and software. I used to look at, and try to justify, buying a Compaq portable. The reality is, for the applications we used, 640kb was more than sufficient as was a clock speed of 6-8Hz. We never filled a 10MB drive. It was exciting back then to get hardware and software and tinker and try to get it to work. There were often challenges but I cannot recall anyone whining…it was an “exciting” time.
We had a network sniffer version of that, it cost the same as a house.
Bill_Janssen
(Wigwam wool socks now on asymmetrical isolation feet!)
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Well, I’m a Lisp & Python guy, but I always appreciated C#. Microsoft took a look at Java and improved it. Not so much the C# language itself, but the underlying mechanism. So, more like gilding a lawnmower engine.
Lot of respect for someone who can do C++ well. It’s as complicated as Common Lisp and even fussier about things.
Hah - Compaq Portables were for weaklings. We had an IBM System/23 in for evaluation and were most amused by the brochure that had a man carrying it. Nothing said “I think I’ve just had a hernia” better than the expression on his face…
I do a lot of analysis code in Python these days (I was a MATLAB guy then went to python). But I am a big fan of strictly typed languages, like C++. But I cut my teeth on Pascal and have some thick binders of fortran 77 that contain all my graduate studies code. I don’t know why I keep a few things in my life, but those binders are one of them.
I do a bit of firmware programming for projects at work in C, and it’s amazing what a $2 chip can do these days.
with the original IBM PC