WatchHave you hugged a software engineer today? If not, go out and find one and hug him.
The following videos compare the Internet in 1993 to that of today. The difference, hardware and lots and lots of software advancement. And who's responsible for all that advancement? That's right, your friendly neighborhood engineer.
Next time you take the Internet for granted, remember who brought it to you.
And as a bonus, the 1980s sucked compared to today.
Now go out and hug that engineer.
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75 comments
San Diego, CA
Let me tell you, the first time I saw a computer was during a local college open house when I was a kid. It was a huge IBM. While every one was admiring the front, I walked to the back side fascinated by the vacuum tube and wires. Yes, those were the punch card day.
My first email was sent using Digital VT52. I was hooked, and made computing my career, it has been very rewarding. haha.
All the developments in the valley has been great, but there are downside. The valley used to be a great place to live, now the real estate price has sky rocketed... got to get out.
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46 male
Menlo Park, CA
Very cool videos! Funny how they just said "internet" instead of "the internet".
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764 threads
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Boca Raton, FL
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Yeah, we did talk a bit weirdly about tech before we figured out how to make things sound normal. Now things are so mundane.
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MoneySheep says
LOL! ah a DEC guy.. i used the IBM 370/390 with PC using an IRMA board.
Even though not in IT, still you need to use it in your accounting/finance/operations job.
Not only did we have email for global communications, there were "twitter like" functions like "BUZZ terminal" and file sharing/transfer functions. And yet we all worked in the "Cloud" saving and executing programs.
Sometimes it seems today we are just recreating those same mainframe functions and applications on new platforms.
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thomas.wong1986 says
True enough. Even the WWW is in concept not that different from CICS maps and transactions I used in the 70's.
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Boca Raton, FL
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With the exception of a brief period during the 1980/1990s, centralized services have always been preferred. Pre-80s it was mainframes and dumb terminals. Today it's clouds and smart phones. Truly the same model except more sophisticated.
Smart phones are basically advanced dumb terminals with lots of advanced I/O devices (compass, GPS receiver, gyroscopes, graphics, sound, etc.).
The only major difference between the two models is that your terminal is no longer connected to a single mainframe, but billions of servers running millions of services.
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Dan8267 says
what mainframes had ... what we dont have today, is best of breed applications consistent and compatible not to mention connected across other applications which "talk" to each other. As such you have today "Silo Problems".
Other issues, since you dont have Point to Point ... you have security issues, unheard of back in the day.. we will eventual regress to point to point communications for some matters like banking to resolve security issues.
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142 comments
San Jose, CA
my parents raised two girls in a semi Christian household; needless to say we were late bloomers to the Internet; but both of us caught on soon enough. Late Pentium 2, K6/P3 era, not 486 like most nerds seem to be of our generation. Last before proper broadband and it was great. Unreal, Quake 2 :3