The deterioration of IT

Flinty997

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119619249#Comment_119619249

Everything is multi threaded these days....

Floppybits

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119619071#Comment_119619071

In one of my first jobs the company had OS/2. The only useful thing I found on it was the instant messaging to other users on the network that the sysadmin knew nothing about. 😁

monkeybutter

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119616229#Comment_119616229

like everything rented, its not that affordable really, it worked out to be very very expensive in the long term which is why it died out

Northside dubliners were the black or europe ireland and dublin even in the 1990s as you are well aware

Ireland was behind US and UK by miles back then theres no getting away from it

14% of Americans had a vcr in 1985, was 66% in 1990

I think some of you have gotten the 80s and 90s mixed up

Flinty997

Renting TVs etc was still a thing in places with a lot of renters, Rathmines etc. I think local repair shops used to do it here and there. Can't remember when. I'm going to say late 90s early 00s.

monkeybutter

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119622843#Comment_119622843

it was not a good value option, there was a big place in rathmines did it, made a fortune off it

its basically a scam on poor people, like the xmass saving schemes etc

Flinty997

Maybe pensioners too.

People used to rent their landine phones too. Another scam by the telcos.

BrianD3

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119622843#Comment_119622843

Yes, I well remember us renting a TV when I lived in a student house in 1999. One lad owned our VCR - a top loader so probably at least 15 years old at the time.

SuperBowserWorld

You can have an N - N real time video call in HD for free now.

Maybe IT has not deteriorated 👍

monkeybutter

a minimal market but you can still possible rent a TV in dublin, at a similar stupid price

Fogmatic

Yes and no.

Being in my 70s doesn't mean being unused to IT stuff - quite the opposite. I got my first computer (and the first one I'd ever used) in 1986 (when we were in London), thinking it could save me some time as the overworked office of my husband's little building business. An ex display Sinclair QL, sans manual (though plenty of free help around there and then). I was soon doing cash flow projections for the bank, and writing a few little fun programs, and it was very portable (easy to take on visits to a UK relative who had a colour TV, and actually watch one of my little programmes working!). But I soon added a 286 IBM compatible system (to order from an assembly firm in outer London, at half the price of shop ones), as they seemed more future-proof (especially with paying a small amount more to double hard disk capacity to 20mb!). It moved with us to Ireland, and I used it till 2000, admittedly mainly for the word processor. (An, er, incarnation of it with a tendency to lock you out of files, needing a magic spell provided by the evening class people!).

I never did have the time to get much of our business data entered - just gained a hobby instead. Running your own computer needed some learning then, but thanks to evening classes it didn't take long at all (hardware and programming basics, from the lowest level to the interfaces, with some programming along the way; Basic, MSDos, Dbase etc). And I've found it useful to this day. It saves me a lot of trawling through repetitive instructions and tips with every new thing. And MSDos has got me out of a few holes since changing to Windows (e.g. when I once deleted instead of moving a file essential for screen display).

I think it's great the way tech stuff has got powerful enough for anyone to use without training (even if selling stuff might be the main driver). On the other hand, knowing some basics can save a lot of time when faced with an unfamiliar device, or when something goes awry. (And I usually know the answer if I get a chance to help a younger person with some IT problem - if the grey hair doesn't get in the way, that is!).

Hotblack Desiato

I got my first computer (and the first one I'd ever used) in 1986

Ah, a late developer 😁

Like you, and Linus Torvalds, I owned a Sinclair QL.. a great computer crippled by the usual Sinclair cost saving (8 bit bus) and the Microdrives which worked on a nod and wink basis.

Lots of people are very harsh towards the older generations, they literally built the platforms today's technologies were built upon. I'd much rather kids in school were taught the history of TCP/IP rather than random wars this f'kin country wasn't even involved in.

riclad

theres not enough programmers out there to maintain all the apps and websites, every company has a website, or an app,also some websites stop working as many programs are changed or updated ,techies may be boring to you if your not interested in tech, like talking to a mechanic is boring if you don,t care about cars.

,some uk websites dont program in options for irish phone no,s properly .most programmers, know c,java ,html ,eg its almost a full time job keeping up with advances in online programming ,gui,s , interfaces, programming api,s etc

AndrewJRenko

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119622908#Comment_119622908

The rental idea is having a bit of a revival.

https://www.sky.com/glass

DublinWriter

Of similar vintage, and I'll just say that in terms of specialisation, everyone is getting better at less and less!

IT has become one of the most dysfunctional disciplines. IT Managers don't, programmers can't, BAs shouldn't.

As Tom Peters once said, IT has more in common with the fashion industry that the technology industry. In the mid 90's I saw tons of companies abandon Novel for Windows NT. Novel was so advanced at the time that it had Active Directory in the early 90's. Windows NT V3.5 was as flakey as f*ck and didn't even have basics like user disk quota management. But hey, it's Microsoft!

IT fashions come and go...RAD, Unix and C, client-server, n-tier, distributed and ironically we're now back at web pages which basically how the old mainframes/minis used to serve up the UI.

It worries me that this constant faddism in IT has prevented best-practices from emerging in the last 20 years.

However, it's not all doom and gloom. The biggest advance I've seen was in the OS field was open-source Linux emerging triumphant at the back end. Microsoft couldn't develop a stable OS kernel to save it's life until they poached Dave Cutler from DEC. And don't get me started on them poaching Anders Hejlsberg from Borland to develop C#.

As for Agile? We were doing that in the 80's and 90's before it even had a name. We only had one rule - don't put any new release live on a Friday.