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It's a seriously exciting time to be a developer. Or to be alive in general, really. Growing up in the shadow of our failure to colonize space, it was easy to
by DanI-S 15y ago
It's a seriously exciting time to be a developer. Or to be alive in general, really.
Growing up in the shadow of our failure to colonize space, it was easy to imagine that history had basically stalled and there wasn't much left to hope for except an uneventful decline. Added to that, all our interesting problems were too big for an individual to hope to solve.
Instead, the ability for individuals to meaningfully innovate has jumped to levels that haven't been seen since the industrial revolution, or the renaissance. I always envied the 19th Century inventors who created bleeding edge tech without requiring teams of a thousand engineers. I don't think I need to be envious anymore. The coming decades will be just as important.
- acgourley 15y agoI want to share this excitement with you, but what part about an arduino based dev kit for android is exciting you this much?
- DanI-S 15y agoIt's just a symptom of this kind of technology reaching critical mass. In a few years, the majority of the world's mobile devices will have out of the box support for an extensible, personal hardware development platform. A generation of kids will grow up thinking this is normal. The cat is out of the bag.
- mortenjorck 15y agoWe live in a cyberpunk present.
- amalcon 15y agoThis happens over and over. Compare the internal combustion engine. A powerful technology is realized. At first, it's really expensive, and used only for industrial purposes or where it can serve many at once. The cost comes down to where wealthy individuals, professionals who benefit most, and sufficiently motivated hobbyists can get them, and there's huge growth. The cost comes down further, and soon everyone has them. At this point, the market becomes disjoint: you get products aimed for the wealthy (Apple; BMW, Ferrari), products aimed at the hobbyist (various DIY outfits; Jeep), products aimed at professionals who most benefit (RIM, Lenovo, Dell; some Ford/GM/Toyota products), and everyone else (LG, Nokia; Kia, other Ford/GM/Toyota products). I think that middle stage is the most exciting; unfortunately, we're just leaving it. It's still a very exciting time to be a developer, but I would barely hesitate to trade it all to work at Xerox PARC or Bell Labs in their heyday. On the upside, certain areas of biology are poised to move into that second stage any time now, in no small part because of the power commodity computing provides.
- billmcneale 15y ago> It's a seriously exciting time to be a developer. Or to be alive in general, really. I have yet to meet a dead person that's excited to be dead.