Skip to main content

The Future Back in 1992

This was noted over on Presentation Zen where I first started watching it. It's amazing to think this was Jobs presenting back in 1992, the year after FoxPro 2.0/DOS came out onto the market and the same year FoxPro 2.x/Windows was all the buzz.

I recalled seeing a Next machine back in 1991 and immediately wanted one - I even got excited about learning Unix. This intro to NextStep might show you why but really - watch the video instead.

Highlights:
Where is Improv today? That was ONE awesome spreadseet and Excel's naming features never could really compete with it the same way.
NextMail with its drag and drop support.
The DigitalLibrary - where you can pull up articles that you wanted to save (back in 1992) and even had its own search criteria.

The Drag/Drop and Object linking is still something that we currently don't have or users still struggle with. (dragging and dropping from between multiple OSs with live linking) - jeez, I remember doing demos of OLE Linking and embedding in Windows - when? 1997? (anyone remind me)

But the Cool part is custom app development (around the 23 minute mark). Creating a GUI search tool for backend databases (with their DatabaseKit). For those thinking "what's the big deal?" - this was one of the first demos where I can recall the words "you don't have to write any code" - kind of like the mantra Microsoft was talking about this year with Rock the Launch and one I myself have repeated in training classes with Builders and Wizards.

"And you can switch to new databases using 'Adapters' without writing any custom code".

Great nostalgia video but even more- it's amazing what features we use every day today that were just being explained back then.


p.swf (application/x-shockwave-flash Object)

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Elevating Project Specifications with Three Insightful ChatGPT Prompts

For developers and testers, ChatGPT, the freely accessible tool from OpenAI, is game-changing. If you want to learn a new programming language, ask for samples or have it convert your existing code. This can be done in Visual Studio Code (using GitHub CoPilot) or directly in the ChatGPT app or web site.  If you’re a tester, ChatGPT can write a test spec or actual test code (if you use Jest or Cypress) based on existing code, copied and pasted into the input area. But ChatGPT can be of huge value for analysts (whether system or business) who need to validate their needs. There’s often a disconnect between developers and analysts. Analysts complain that developers don’t build what they asked for or ask too many questions. Developers complain that analysts haven’t thought of obvious things. In these situations, ChatGPT can be a great intermediary. At its worst, it forces you to think about and then discount obvious issues. At best, it clarifies the needs into documented requirements. ...

Blogs and RSS come to Microsoft.com

MS has just introduced their portal and it's pretty comprehensive. Nothing quite like learning that some people use AIM instead of MSN messenger, or that there really may be a need for supporting 4 monitors ( Cyrus Complains ) However, it's really a great sign that MS is serious about supporting the blogging community which seems to have um, exploded in size in the past year. Blogs and RSS come to Microsoft.com

I’m Supposed to Know

https://programmingzen.com/im-supposed-to-know/ Great post for developers who are struggling with unrealistic expectations of what they should know and what they shouldn't. Thirty-forty years ago, it was possible to know a lot about a certain environment - that environment was MS-DOS (for non Mac/UNIX systems). . There was pretty much only a handful of ways to get things going. Enter networking. That added a new wrinkle to how systems worked. Networks back then were finicky. One of my first jobs was working on a 3COM + LAN and it then migrated to LAN Manager. Enter Windows or the graphical user interface. The best depiction of the complexity Windows (OS/2, Windows NT, etc) introduced that I recall was by Charles Petzold (if memory serves) at a local user group meeting. He invited a bunch of people on the stage and then acted as the Windows "Colonel", a nice play on kernel. Each person had a role but to complete their job they always had to pass things back to h...