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The rise and fall

Head Rambles Posted on by

I first discovered computers back in the early eighties.

Exciting times.

I soon had my own Spectrum and taught myself to programme BASIC.

Ultimately that led to a job in IT and the learning curve increased as I added other languages to my portfolio.

On the hardware side I watched in amazement as my original 40Mb became redundant and disks grew larger and larger [I currently have 1Tb in this machine with around another 7 or 8Tb on removable drives]. Memory increased in parallel as did processor speed. Floppy drives came and went as did CDs. PCs were replaced by laptops [in my world anyway].

Programmes evolved at an alarming rate and each new release was a moment of interest to see all the new features.

At my peak I was designing loads of sites, using code written from scratch. I was teaching web design and development and was making a reasonable hash of it.

Then something happened. Somehow the whole rush to improve things ground to a near halt. I used to look forward to new Linux releases but now each new release is very much the same as the previous. Windows of course progressively got worse and drove me to Linux a long time ago.

I used to have fun playing around with websites on my laptop. I would try new designs or new features for my various projects. Then the opportunity to add new features seemed to dry up. I don’t even have a web server on my laptop now. The old software I used doesn’t work any more. I could probably fix that but I just couldn’t be bothered.

I am now in pure maintenance mode. I’ll fix something if it breaks but that’s it. This site is coming up to its sixteenth anniversary and I suppose it will drift along for a while more. There is little enthusiasm for change.

There is a new version of WordPress coming out on the first of next month and is causing some excitement in some quarters, The last time they did anything radical [with their new editor] it pissed me off [along with a lot of others]. I can’t see anything interesting in the upcoming version. I’ll upgrade all the sites but that’s simply routine.

WordPress 6.1?

Yawn.

 

Comments

The rise and fall — 8 Comments

  1. Yes, me too. But in the early days each new update made an obvious noticeable improvement, better storage,faster and many added facilities both on the PC and some enabling real world stuff like CD writing, hi-def graphics, web connectivity. It was worth learning how to use it and by and large the learning was fairly simple as it just extended the existing basic skills. Old style HTML was simple to write, languages like BASIC were easy to use even if you did occasionally have to resort to machine code segments they were flat and sequential, you knew what everything was doing. But it’s not like that now. A new PC that goes twice as fast doesn’t actually do anything new that I want to do, doesn’t even go twice as fast with the 3rd world Net connections round here! writing complex software is mostly beyond the ability of most people. Writing a modern web page with style sheets and stuff is way harder than old flat HTML if you only want something simple. Most people now use page editors. Even network stuff, which I could do in my sleep now requires an explanation and lesson from Son about all the words and concepts that I have not kept up with. So like you, I can’t be bothered any more, a couple of simple web sites for local groups and that’s my lot.

    • seconded! I used to look forward to new releases — bugs squashed, useful features — now I dread the need to upgrade — useful features vanished, stuff I don’t need/want/understand getting in the way.

  2. I was a hardware electronic engineer.
    The dreaded words from component manufacturers were “in accordance with our policy of continuous improvement……” Dum, da dum, dum.
    This meant that designs which had been ticking along for years were now at risk.
    And sure enough the law of Sod, or Murphy kicked in.
    Arse, feck.
    Go back to Go, do not collect 200 spondulicks.

  3. I was responsible for desk-top computing in large corporates from the early 1980s, those were exciting days with genuinely useful new features and capabilities appearing at a staggering rate – deciding which ones would be worth following corporately was a major challenge. But then they cracked the basics, standards emerged and the kit became predictable and reliable, beyond that everything else was froth.
    It’s like motor-cars, they spent many decades cracking the basics but, once they had and all modern cars had acquired ‘Japanese’ levels of quality and reliability, any extra ‘features’ became just froth, mere marketing devices to persuade you that their car was better than another.
    I’m glad I was in at the ‘bleeding edge’, it was fun then.

    • The car analogy is bang on. Over the years they have added all sorts of stuff. Some of it is quite handy such as windscreen demisters and wing mirrors [stuff I had to add myself to my first car]. My latest yoke is full of stuff I’m not even sure how to work. The worst is the on-board computer which has a large range of functions [average fuel consumption, how far can I go before the next refill, shit like that]. The end result is that the engine compartment is a foreign land. God be with the days when I could easily replace a clutch-plate at the side of the road….

  4. Even Linux now gets randomly broken when you apply updates. I’m currently enjoying “mintMenu has quit unexpectedly”. That’s the main menu suddenly drops off the panel – duh!

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