Talking with my friend Shawn Hartsock the other day, and we got to talking about the state of software, and some of the history of software development. He’s a big nerd on this subject, and considers ‘computing’ to go back hundreds (or thousands!) of years. Yes, one can make that argument, but I when I talk about computing, I’m generally referring to the stuff that started to become available to mainstream households in the mid ’70s. Systems that one could order or buy in a store that came with enough to let you write your own useful software, or load prewritten software. Visicalc was a bit of a defining moment, and one could argue that the ‘software industry’ as we know it today was born either with Visicalc, or certainly right around that time frame anyway.
Using that as my premise, we can say that the ‘software industry’ has been around for *about* 30 years. I know it’s gone on for far longer than that, but really only for a select few people. It was not an *industry* in the sense that we know it now, nor could it have been. Most software was written specifically for particular pieces of hardware before the time period that I’m talking about.
Given that the modern software industry started about 30 years ago, I was shocked to realize that I’ve been involved in it professionally for nearly 50% of that industry’s lifespan. I started programming in 1981 on a Timex Sinclair ZX81 with 1K of RAM, soon expanded to 16K (assuming the RAM pack didn’t jiggle out of place!) This was a hobbyist phase, to be sure, but I got hooked early. I didn’t do any *professional* programming until 1993, and even then it was just a bit of freelance parttime stuff working through school.
Looking back, and what Shawn and I were discussing, is that we’ve seen a massive shift over the last few years away from ‘shrinkwrap software’ (which is, imo, what was born in the mid/late 70s) to the current ‘software as a service’. Yes, many people still buy MS Office, and we still buy operating systems (Windows, OS X, etc.) But the majority of software that many people use today is web-based. Email may be a prime example, but we’re already seeing moves to web-based word processing, spreadsheets and other ‘office’ staples. Accounting software – Quickbooks is online. There’s likely hundreds of examples to illustrate this switch we’re seeing.
The days of going and buying a disk with software on it are fast disappearing. The gaming industry might be the last major consumer hold out, but I’m not a huge gamer, so I don’t know much about how that’s shaping out. What is interesting to me is to be witnessing this shift happen, somewhat gradually, but at the same time rather quickly.
Taking, say, 1978 as a starting point for the modern software industry, we had about 15 years until the ‘internet’ started to become something ‘average’ people might be able to use. Students were using it more and more when I was in school at that point (email, ftp, telnet, irc, etc.) From 1993 through 2008, another 15 years, we’ve seen a dramatic shift away from packaged software to ‘software as a service’, the latest fancy term for ‘client/server’ from decades earlier :)
This was a post I’d started several weeks ago, then let sit. I’ve lost some of the points I was going to make, so I’m putting it out here now in case any one cares to comment on it. It might help jog my memory as to what I was planning to say. Perhaps, in a nutshell, this is just my way of saying “I feel old”. :)
