The rink is waiting for no one

Of all that I do or use today, the only thing that I have left in common with my first job is writing code.

Everything else has changed and changed, and changed again.

If you do not continue to learn, read, improve your skills all the time, then ultimately this vile rink behind you will crush you completely. And here your career is most likely over.
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When I got my first job, I had no idea what would happen next. In 1981, nothing foretold that everything would change at a gigantic pace. People still wrote packaged applications on mainframes, everywhere there was a mini-computer with terminals and personal computers were a little more than toys. Few had a computer at home, there was no e-mail outside of large companies, and even this was hardly used. And, of course, there was no Internet. There were only a few programming languages ​​and most of them were created in 1950.

There were several magazines that wrote about programming and there was nothing even remotely resembling an exhibition. I even had friends who received a CS (Computer Science) degree and who didn’t even touch upon anything that was recently developed. People could get a job as a programmer even without experience or education, just like me. You either studied it yourself, or maybe at work.

On my first day, I almost had no idea that behind all this there was a rumbling monster that was just starting its run.

My first two years consisted mainly in programming on Fortran with small inserts of assembler. I continued to work with Basic and various assembler dialects, and even dabbled with Pascal at home. I read everything that could be found just because it was interesting.

When I got into a group of microcomputers, the pace of life suddenly began to accelerate. After my efforts to write an “apple” application, an IBM PC appeared and I had to write for it in Pascal. I was asked to check a set of portable Unix-boxes, which should have been sent to potential customers to verify the specifications of the F-16. This was my first acquaintance with C, which led me to an order for the C compiler to work. No one at work has heard of him. At the same time, I briefly got acquainted with Lisa, but at the same time, I had no idea about Object Pascal. I’ve seen a Mac ad, but we haven’t had one, although I’d ​​like to work with one of them.

When I quit and started my startup (someday I'll tell you about it) to create a spreadsheet program for Mac (Trapeze), we decided to do it in C, although Apple, at that time, still preferred Pascal. Subsequently, C turned out to be the right choice, since C dominated for a long time (and is still the main one for Linux).

At about the same time, I read the famous issue of Byte magazine about Smalltalk and immediately realized that there was a future for the objects, and that I needed to sort them out immediately.

Now I really began to realize that the pace of change in programming will never slow down again. Even during the late 80s, without the Internet or e-mail, the speed with which something new appeared appeared more and more clearly.

After selling the startup and starting programming consultations on a Mac, over time we started DeltaGraph (that's another story), and I created several C extensions for working with objects. C ++ still did not exist, at least, usable, but I wanted to use its advantages, so I wrote several banal extensions that allowed me to build several output drivers, but still leave only one internal output generator.

Finally, in the early 90s C ++ appeared and I already understood how to design using OO. Of course, I still occasionally code in C.

At some point I read about the so-called “web” and worked a little with the text browser and wondered where all this would lead. In the end, I worked in the Bay Area for about a year in the mid-90s, and I remember the day Netscape went into the world. But even seeing this, at that moment I did not understand at all what huge changes were to occur.

Mentally returning at that time, I remember reading about the new Java language and studying it. By that time, the Internet had already begun to develop, it was still so primitive and I was not sure where it all went, but now I knew enough to participate. When significant changes in the world begin, you may not know what will happen in the future, but you should already keep up with them.

I got a job at a web consulting firm that specialized in NeXT WebObjects that were developed in a kind of perverted language called Objective-C. Obviously, some people in the early 80s, like me, were fascinated by C and Smalltalk, with one exception - they made a real language out of it. I not only learned this new language, but found another strange language - Javascript, which had little to do with Java. Add to this HTML and suddenly I had a completely new platform for work.

Around this time, I began to meet people who also talked about other programming languages. Looking back at the time of my first job, I realized that I would no longer be able to know about everything that happens in programming. I had to learn to focus on certain points, and it was enough to pay attention to others in order not to miss anything.

The big rink began its movement.

During this first wave of web programming, some of my friends who got a CS degree when I first started working suddenly became unemployed, because people started giving up on mainframes and Cobol, but they haven’t learned anything since time. Unlike me, they focused only on what they had learned and with what they had been working for almost two decades, and all of this suddenly disappeared.

They were crushed.

When Java and J2EE (now JEE) first appeared, at first I just tried to work with it, and in the end result I began to demonstrate it to the others. I called it "Alien Technology." Pretty soon we switched to creating web applications using Java J2EE, just as primitive as it was then.

Working in the mid-00s, I read about the so-called AJAX and decided to use it in a pair of internal applications that I designed. When I mentioned this in the design team, they accused me of using new technologies! I had to explain that it was simple Javascript. They told me that Javascript is dying, that there is no need to waste time trying to do something new with it. And people are funny.

Now that the Internet is working to its fullest extent and the concept of open source code has become commonly used, real hell has opened. I didn’t even have time to follow the development of all this. Now you had to choose what you would be good at, something for interest and development, and hope that you at least know the names of the rest. This whole situation is aggravated to this day, and, in fact, sometimes even scary.

Every week there is another new language. Add to this all the frameworks. HTML5, CSS3 and even more abbreviations that no one can remember at once. Today programming is a huge whirlpool of new ideas. Some of them are astounding, some have enormous potential, many end in nothing. But in all this sea of ​​programming you have to choose the right direction!

This fucking rink is now accelerating and programmers are working like crazy to keep up with it. Do I need to practice ROR or write only JavaScript applications? Should I learn Python or Scala? SQL or SQL? IOS or Android? Clouds or not? Mad or crazy, choose your poison yourself.

Recalling three decades of work in time-ahead-skating rink, I can not believe how much has changed since I wrote Fortran on paper, because we had 7 people at one terminal. During this time, many changes occurred, and many people were forced to become managers or to engage in networks or sell hamburgers.

What will happen in the next 30 years? Will the programmers stay or will we all be crushed? I can not remember a single period in history when so much has changed with such tremendous speed in one industry. There is no time to take a break without learning something new in case what you know today becomes obsolete tomorrow.

It does not matter if you are 55 or 55 years old, you know something or nothing at all, what you do today will no longer be relevant in 10-20 years. I watched it over and over again. One of my favorite expressions is “The only thing that never changes is the ability to change yourself.” Only I think you can add something - the changes continue to accelerate.

And the gnashing monster breathes in your neck and the fuel it does not end.

Note : The reader gave me a link to this 2001 article: The Law of Accelerating Returns from Ray Kurzweil. Although, it will take you about 12 years to read it!

The original is here .