The future may be bright- but I miss the good old days! 18

[guestgulkan]

Take me back to the 1980's when engineers really were engineers.
Computers were new, and you could still go down to
Maplins for a packet of discrete electronic components.
Assembly language was the thing
Ethernet? About 10 people the world knew what that was.
It was like the pioneering days of the old west.

Now, engineers have been reduced to simple 'black box' changers and any half-wit can become an engineer or programmer.

I suppose it's all in the name of progress, but for me the fun and personal job satisfaction has gone.

 

[AIXSPadmin]

"1 person to administer 3 AS/400 supporting 500-1000 interactive users, 1000's of batch jobs, 1000's of database transactions as a server PER DAY! Multi-billion $$ manufacturer. Every day. I think that beats UNIX and Windows servers."

Umm, it depends on the size of the server. If I have a Nighthawk II SP high node with 16GB mem I can run easily 50 Oracle databases along with WebSphere (WebFear?), voice response units, and many, many other apps with thousands of concurrent users and thousands of database transactions; on one server and not have any complaints of slowness!

And I can easily support 100 SP nodes myself!

 

[manarth]

tarwn - I think you forgot the <irony> </irony> tags... I don't think they cottoned on lol

<marc> i wonder what will happen if i press this...[ul][li]please give feedback on what works / what doesn't[/li][li]need some help? how to get a better answer: faq581-3339[/li][/ul]

 

[dogbert2]

ITAA.org has revised job outlook for 2003 as soft (aka, no growth at all when downsizing is taken into effect).

A article in the Seattle Times:

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/134689304_pink05.html

where the AAUW (American Assoc. of Univ. Women) are complaining about the lack of women in I.T. as system analysts, software designers, and engineers.

Articles in news.com over india's software woes as demand for product softens (gee, has the bubble over there started to deflate)?

Now, all this aside, I suspect programming jobs will shift from innovation to maint. cycles, and this will turn the programming side of the house into doing less research and development.

Any comments?

 

[guestgulkan]

<dogbert2>.......I suspect programming jobs will shift from innovation to maint. cycles, and this will turn the programming side of the house into doing less research and development..
Speaking as a 'technical user' with some base level knowledge of progrmming - my opinion is that there has not been much programmining innovation for some time.

In my mind there are two type of software:-
1. Commercial software - general purpose - write it - put it on the shelf and see if it sells ( one to many relationship if you like). This type of software does not lend itself to innovation.

2. Customer specific - One to one software. This is specific software a software company may develop for a specific customer for a specific job - for example.
In industry this maybe for example for a new power station, or steel plant control system.
There is money here - so some innovation is possible - but if that innovation may threaten the contract
then it will be tossed out the window.


Real software innovations cannot be done under the pressures of having to make a living, or keeping tabs on the bottom line, or watching the cash flow. It takes a lot of R+D to be truly inovative, which takes a lot of money. When times get hard, one of the first departments to take the hit is R+D.
To the average worker - R+D is just a lot of over-rated, over-paid know-it-alls not producing anything (there is some truth there).

Even the PC - a revolutionary product, did not use innovative software.
MS-DOS was just a bit of a rehash of existing software (bit of unix, bit of the other).
Even now Windows contain no real inovative software.

 

[CajunCenturion]

You make a good point guestgulkan about software innovation. I'm curious, what was the last programming innovation that you consider to be real?



Good Luck
--------------
As a circle of light increases so does the circumference of darkness around it. - Albert Einstein

 

[guestgulkan]

CajunCenturion - Now that's a poser.
I'll look at it from a users point of view.
Let's assume the main reason for putting any 'innovative' product on the market(whether hardware or software) is to get users to go 'wow I got to get this' and part with
hard cash.
Then the last software product that did this for me was the WWW. I parted with cold hard cash for complete new PC system.

 

[CajunCenturion]

There's no question that the web was quite an innovation, even tho the innovation began some 33 years ago with DARPANET, and the first email being exchanged some 31 years ago, although some might question the web as being software.

Might make some good new threads to discuss what have been the greatest software innovations (not products, but technology innovations), hardware innovations, and what we might consider future innovations around the corner.

Good Luck
--------------
As a circle of light increases so does the circumference of darkness around it. - Albert Einstein

 

[KornGeek]

guestgulkan,
I disagree with you completely regarding software innovation. It may seem insignificant to you, but innovation takes many forms.

When a company decides to change their user-interface to make their product easier to use, that is innovation.

When software can help you compute your taxes (and be current with tax laws), that is innovation.

Whenever software is developed to solve any new need, that is innovation.

Even if the innovation does not change the face of the industry or make magazine covers, that does not change the fact that somebody is being innovative. Even if another company does something similar, I still have to do the R & D to figure out how my implementation will work.

For the software that sits on a shelf, innovation is what gets put into the software to make it competitive. It is what gives your software &quot;the edge.&quot;

Maybe the main reason I disagree is that I believe my definition of innovation differs from yours. In my opinion, something doesn't need to be revolutionary to be innovative.

 

[Stevehewitt]

Inovation can take many forms. Take DAT or RAID its a cheap way for SME's to have redundantancy/Back ups, yet years ago it was floppys' or CD-R. Software - Look at M$ since Win95. As much as WinXP has its fault, its much more innotive that previous versions of Windoze.

Saying that &quot;innotive&quot; is based on personal perspetive, with each poster being correct to their own definition.

Steve Hewitt

 

[Stevehewitt]

LOL
By the way: if there is any management/round table ppl reading this post, I have a suggestion - a spell checker!!! ;-)

Steve Hewitt

 

[dilettante]

I agree, but perhaps we ought to talk about revolutionary vs. evolutionary innovation. Or incremental vs. sweeping innovation.

Even packaging changes like the adoption of &quot;blade&quot; or 1 or 2U high-density server configurations were innovative and have made a difference.

 

[Stevehewitt]

Innovation? Christ - what is wrong with you people!!! Look 10 years ago. People on networks (if they had them!) were using Windows for Workgroups, with a 33.6kbps modem on a server - and thats rich companies!

Look at an office of 200 people now, and look back 10 years. Its not hard. IT overally is an innovation, and its also evolving. Look at DOS, and WinXP (although I hate XP - give me Win2k Pro anyday!;-)) Can't you see the difference. The GUI, apps, hardware supports, plug and play (or pray?!), variations in computers. 10 years ago I could right a letter on a dot matrix printer, and maybe send a email to a collegue (if it was a big company). Thats it.

Now, one of my clients has just 12 users. They can surf, have own emails addresses, fax from their own logon on the network, check email from home via POP3 or via the web, company intranet, play music CD's, burn off CD's in 5 mins, play online games at 100Mbs, talk via VoIP, print to a range of printers including colour lasers, add data in sage with a nice GUI (not DOS), add up costings of each sale and pull the data down using Access/SQL DB instead of creating HUGE Excel spreadsheets.
Even looking at the hardware: Tablet PC's, Pocket PC's Laptops, Notebooks etc. Everything has changed! For the better? - Well... Thats another post!

Why try to pin point a specific &quot;thing&quot; in IT that has innovated the workplace and look at the overall market/business.

Steve Hewitt

 

[strongm]

>10 years ago I could right a letter on a dot matrix printer

Blimey, and here was me thinking the Laserjet II came out in the late 80s

 

[CubeE101]

Yes... But at what cost?
If it was a huge company... It might have had a laser printer...

But they were not in every office like they are now...

and I don't believe they could print color either...

10 years ago, the most common printer was still dot-matrix...

Now people hardly know what a dot-matrix printer is, and everyone has bubble/ink/desk/designjet printers or laser printers...

now you can go to walmart and get a scanner/Fax/Color printer All-in-One Combo for less than $100 dollars

hell, about 10 years ago 1 meg of ram was $100 now you can't hardy buy a computer with less than 512meg
Plus the processor...

10 years ago 50 - 100mhz was fast... now I'm typing on a 2ghz machine that came loaded with 512mb ram, 80GB hard drive, dvd player, cd burner, 17in monitor, ethernet card, 6 USB ports, GeForce 4 w/ TV out, and Suround Sound w/ sub for under $1000

Have Fun, Be Young... Code BASIC
-Josh Stribling

http://cubee.topcities.com

 

[Grenage]

But isn't that all just natural progression ?

I mean it happens in every field, innovation is always going to happen at some point.

 

[Morsing]

In 1992 one of my friend s bought a Canon Ljet 4+ new for 150 pounds. My father bought an HP 4L the year after for less than 400 pounds. My school had several office laser printers.

I know I'm opening a can of worms here but 100MHz is more than enough for an office PC.

But as grenage said there is nothing new about that.

Cheers

Henrik Morsing
Certified AIX 4.3 Systems Administration
& p690 Technical Support

 

[Stevehewitt]

OK, fair comment - but look now. Wow you got a 4L for £400, you can get a HP 2200DN for that price now. And duplexing is an innovation IMHO (this is going to get messy! ;-)). I mean look at how IT has been innotitive since the first computer. Look at the entire market and you can see how much it has changed - generally for the better (productivity wise).

Steve Hewitt

 

[Grenage]

IT/Computers do so much and have so many accesories and programs there is a major scope. Plus with so many companies pimping their wares the competition is pretty fierce, no improvements can quickly result in no business.

 

[svanels]

The price of computers has fell down sharply the last 20 years. The only price that is still high and has not moved is of the dot matrix printer. With all the fancy things like bubble, laser inkjet etc.. the dot matrix still beat them in one point.

Steven van Els
SAvanEls@cq-link.sr

 

[guestgulkan]

Mind you the price of these 'cheap' printers can be totally misleading.
I can buy an inkjet printer for £40 here in the uk.
Four months later a change of ink cartridges will cost £40 with the HP cartridges being notoriously expensive.