[rescue] Personal progressions (was: what to do with a dec alpha 255)

[Sheldon T. Hall]

Quoth Aaron Finley ...
[I said ...]
> > My resume claims that I've used 25 programming languages on 
> > 9 operating systems.  If I were looking for a job, I'd 
> > probably update that.
> 
> I'm fresh out of college - so I haven't had the time for much
> exposure, but my progression was the following:
> 
> BASIC on TI-99/4A, DOS on IBM/XT, DOS on IBM/AT, BASIC on 386, Windows
> 3.0/3.1, Linux on 486/Pentium, Solaris on a Sun Sparc 1+, then a 2,
> then a 5, then IRIX on an Indigo 2, IRIX on an Onyx, Tru64 on a Alpha,
> AIX on a 44P-270, then back to Windows, and been with Windows for
> several years now across several machines.

One of the big differences between now and then is that there is so much
more stuff around now.  There were substantially no personal computer at all
until I was about thirty, and what of them there were were bloody expensive.
Not to mention that you actually had to buy them, since no one had had one
long enough for it to become obsolete.

Now, anyone in a reasonably metropolitan area of the USA can have a garage
full of computers for little or no money.  This makes it a lot easier (and
much more fun) to have a wide variety of computing experiences.

>From the standpoint of being able to get into the field easily, and
understand all of it once you got there, the old days were definitely
superior.  Nowadays, though, it's a lot easier to use the stuff, and both
the equipment and the the body of knowledge available beggar the
imagination.

This is not the only reason I envy the young.

-Shel