Wednesday, October 15, 2008

When Everything is Aplenty

Recently in IT, there is an explosion growth of everything.

Around ten years ago, things were much simpler. You didn't have much choice on hardware, OS, or computer languages.

However things have changed: There are a lot of devices that can beat any high-end desktop from ten years ago, and no one would ever dreamed then these devices really can compute.

Similarly there are just a hell-lot of operating systems. Aside from the oldies like Unix, Mac, and Windows. We have some pretty new contenders like Linux, and those old-but-revamped like Minix and OpenSolaris. I will leave Linux derivatives alone as there are too many to count. In fact, there is an OS which is a cross between solaris and Linux, but I can't recall its name off my head right now.

On the programming language front, there is literally a revolution. Partly because computers are much more popular now, and another important factor is nowadays computers are much more powerful with comparably more storage. The latter is important because theoretical stuff that couldn't be realized or too inefficient last time finally are possible now.

Given all the happenings in IT, do you think we are blessed, or cursed? You judge.

2 comments:

The Soothsayer said...

I think it seems like there are more choices of OSes because they are starting to resemble each other more and more with each release. Not such a clear cut way of choosing and differentiating them now.

Cuppa Chai said...

I agree, the same goes to programming languages. Most of the time the differences are only superficial. Some may argue if 2 languages are turing-complete, indeed they are equivalent in power and thus differences are 'superficial'. You decide. ;)