Ed George Developer

Happy New Year to all!

I am writing this one day after my 21st birthday which is a strange milestone for me (and everyone else in fact), considering the next milestone will be in 9 years time when I reach 30 and edge ever nearer to that fabled ‘mid-life crisis stage’ of a man’s life. (The word Crisis will no longer be mentioned from this point on-wards after the harrowing events of last night)

It’s scary to think that in 21 years of existence just how far things have come. I am of course talking quite generally here as global politics, human rights and certainly technology have all come a long long way since I was born in 1992. Speaking solely on the technological side of things, there are many things that astound me about just how quick changes are still propagating ~60 years on from the birth of ‘modern’ computing. For example, realistically how many children today, or even 3-4 years ago for that matter, would recognize a VCR? How many families in the UK still own a VCR? Finally, how can it possibly be that in my 21 years of existence I have seen the VCR format die, the DVD format rise and now witness its possible successor Blu-Ray take center stage? I have also seen the tape format nearly erased from existence and replaced by first CDs and then MP3s!

In fact here is a short overview of some of the scariest facts I have comprised about some of the changes that have come about since I came to be!

Since being born:

• The iPod was invented and has had 24 different models released, of which I owned 3
• In ’92 Apple’s Classic II had a 16Hz CPU and 2MB RAM
• 21 years later my MacBook Pro has a 2.4 GHz CPU and 8GB RAM
• Microsoft released Windows 3.1 in ’92. (I remember using it at a friends house)
• Microsoft have released 8* main consumer Operating Systems since
• Apple have released 13*
• In 1992 the first ever Text Message (SMS) was sent
• Since 2010 – close to 200,000 text messages are sent every second
• The Multipurpose Internet Mail Extension (MIME) standard was introduced in 1992 that allowed multimedia and other file types to become attachments in emails
• In 1995 (earliest data I could find) Netscape held 80% of the browser market. IE had upwards of 95% global market share around 2002 and now has between 25-30% a mere 10 years later.
•  Apple created the iPad, a ‘revolutionary’ device that introduced the subsequent ‘tablet revolution’ – Microsoft’s Project Origami had attempted something similar a few years before and was written off due to it’s poor battery life and reliance on stylus usage. (I got to test an early Samsung tablet running Windows XP for Tablets, and it was just awful)
• The British company ARM in 2013 are responsible for the most popular 32-bit instruction set architecture in the world with a presence in 95% of smartphones, whilst in 1992 the company had only been established for 2 years
• In 2006 MySpace hit 100 million users, 5 years later around 60% of these users had left
• In 2008 Facebook traffic surpassed MySpace and 4 years later the site registered it’s 1billionth user
• In 1992 I didn’t own a computer
• In 2013 I have ‘owned’ nearly 10

My point is, Moore’s Law clearly has taken it’s toll on the technology I have witnessed since my birth! I can honestly say that I am truly excited to see where my field, Computer Science, is in 21 years time. It is a mind boggling concept to imagine what the world will be like then!

As many people that read this blog are of similar age to me, I hope you have found the facts I have collected to be of some intrest! It would be interesting to hear what shocked you most and how you have noticed things change since you were born. It doesn’t matter if you are older too, I can appreciate that for many people nowadays  punch cards were the only way to learn to program! (Give me Sublime Text 2 any day!)

Let me know what you think in the Comments below!

Til next time,

Ed

*My definition is Major releases and does not include Server Versions etc

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