Murali talks about “Appy Times”. Hot stuff is happening in computing technology, all these apps are coming out, new technology to build those apps is coming out…
As someone working in the software field, surely I would be up to all the latest, and know all the buzz-words and tehnologies?
Not really! When Murali asked me about bootstrap, a popular framework for mobile “first projects”, I had no clue what that was! In fact, on my Android phone, I had absolutely NO apps at all, except what I needed for my work. Until a few months ago when I ran into 55-NDA again and downloaded Telegraph and Whatsapp! So I am really not an “appening” dude. I really have no clue about the latest app that just came out and will cook lunch, or whatever…
I have seen more “next biggest thing”s in technology die rather than live. Even when they don’t die, they change. I worked on something called VisiCalc, which back then was considered a revolutionary technology. It was the original spreadsheet, and for the first time made businesses take personal computers seriously. But it’s no longer around, long ago replaced by something called Microsoft Excel.
I saw a language called “Ada” which was going to change the world – nowhere now. There was Pascal before that. Even things which succeed, have limited life-span. The “C” language once was used for everything. Then its bigger better version called C++ came along. Now it’s been entirely replaced by Java (and on Apple side of things, “Swift”) and new programmers haven’t even heard of “C” or “C++”. Lisp was once the coolest thing in the programming world. Now, nobody knows what that is.
So when I come across the “next biggest thing”, now I have a wait-and-see approach. If it survives, it will eventually come my way… and ideally someone will pay me to learn it! Though sometimes I have to scramble – and learn some new thing that has rapidly taken over – on my own before I can get a job in it.
For an intellectual hobby, I have kept up with physics. Things seem a little more permanent there. Force still equals mass times acceleration.
Mukesh, nice write up . I have tried visicalc on PC in circa 1993 , I think. by then lotus 123 was in and excel was not ubiquitous (India was at-least 5 years behind due to the hardware costs)…. Physics as an intellectual hobby sounds verrrry intellectual. I would stick to learning languages, be it JavaScript or be it Sanskrit .. – murali
Murali, those physics and math book prizes at the NDA spoiled me (I guess gave me too much encouragement) – and I continued to enjoy discussing physics throughout my career! I did a lot of physics on the side, as a hobby. In fact, I have a science book coming out shortly, which is mostly about the physics I did on the side. / Mukesh