Reflecting on the Incredible Advancements in Technology
As I sit here reflecting on the incredible advancements in technology that have shaped our world, I am filled with gratitude for the visionaries who paved the way. In this article, I want to express my heartfelt thanks to the individuals and innovations that have had a profound impact on our lives.
The Pioneers of Technology
1. Tim Berners-Lee and HTTP/S - A Simple Yet Revolutionary Idea I am thankful for Tim Berners-Lee's simple yet revolutionary idea of creating a system where computers can communicate with each other using HTTP requests and responses. This foundation has enabled 95% of what happens on the internet, and I'm grateful for everything it has enabled.
2. Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and Steve Wozniak - The Personal Computer Age These three pioneers played a major role in ushering in the personal computer age. Their creations spawned countless businesses and products that dominate our world today. While I have my differences with Jobs, I must admit that he led not one but two revolutions - the personal computer and the smartphone.
3. Tim Berners-Lee and HTTP/S - A Profoundly Simple System I don't think many people realize how profoundly simple the World Wide Web is. One computer says "Hey, I have a text request" and another computer responds "Okay, here's some text back." Sure, that's an oversimplification, but not by much.
Modern Innovations
4. Visual Studio Code - A Versatile IDE An IDE that everyone uses for pretty much all languages and development? Freely available and actively updated? Thousands of cool extensions? Cross-platform? What's not to like about Visual Studio Code?
5. GPS - A Game-Changer in Navigation It is hard for kids these days to conceive of having to call and get directions before heading out to some previously unknown destination. The Global Positioning System (GPS) enables all kinds of mapping and navigation applications that we never would have conceived without it.
6. Dependency Injection - A Beautiful Development Principle If I could go back 25 years and take with me only one development principle to tell developers about, it would be dependency injection. What a magnificent, beautiful thing it is! I loved it so much, I wrote a whole book on it.
7. REST - A Genius-Level Innovation Getting one computer to do work for another computer was long the Holy Grail of programmers. It took a special kind of genius to notice that the four basic HTTP actions corresponded to a database's CRUD (create, read, update, delete) system.
Personal Reflections
8. My Dad and his IBM 5100 - A Personal Note Finally, on a highly personal note... My dad was a cardiologist and a very early member of the International Society for Computerized Electrocardiology. His hospital had one of the first "portable computers," an IBM 5100. I saved up and bought my very own data storage tape and converted a video game to run on it.
9. Object-Oriented Programming - A Eureka Moment I'll never forget the moment when things clicked in my brain and I finally understood the concept of object-oriented programming (OOP). It was fantastic! OOP has come under fire a bit in recent years, but it is the foundation for pretty much everything we do in code these days.
10. Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and Steve Wozniak - The Personal Computer Age It's hard to say who was most responsible for ushering in the personal computer age, but Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and Steve Wozniak all played a major role.
Conclusion
In conclusion, I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude to the pioneers of technology who have had a profound impact on our lives. Their innovations and creations have enabled us to communicate, navigate, and develop software with ease.