Software Development History
Hi, Habr! I present to your attention the translation of an article from Adrian Bbonfues' Medium author.
Let me rephrase the words of Marc Andreessen (Marc Andreessen) “the software devours the world” into “the software has already eaten the world”.
Well, it turns out that in order to tell the hardware what to do, you had to program it - you needed software. We began to expand the capabilities of the equipment, programming it and creating software. A computer is essentially a smart calculator. What gives computers their power depends on what you can program for them — calculate the flight path of the rocket or calculate the bank records of customers for accounting purposes.
Early software was developed specifically for the specific application for which it will be used, and the equipment on which it will work. If you have written part of the accounting software for company A, it is unlikely that the same software product will work in company B without much improvement. The software did not differ portability at that time.
Bill Gates foresaw that an increasing number of computers being produced would need appropriate software that would handle the core internal processes of the CPU , RAM, and disk storage. This would allow developers to focus on creating applications that solve user problems, instead of writing common code to manage computer hardware, such as things like reading / writing files. The disk operating system, known as DOS , had to solve this particular problem, thus setting the stage for a real boom in the PC market at the end of the 20th century — the emergence of Windows. Bill Gates did not invent the Operating System (OS) as a concept, but he undoubtedly made it the main one.
Paul Allen and Bill Gates (1981)
Software reached a peak of popularity in the 90s, and Microsoft dominated this market. Her Office suite was installed by almost everyone, and this made management work much more efficient and productive. Computers were very utilitarian and focused on work tasks rather than games. Personal computers, as we know them now, were still in their infancy. PCs became more and more useful as more and more software was written for them. Various applications, such as word processing, spreadsheet, solitaire, and ultimately web browsing applications, expanded the possibilities of what you could do on your computer. All computers of the time looked the same - cream towers with corresponding hefty CRT monitors.
Turn off your iPhone, and it will become a very shiny and very expensive paperweight. Only when you hold the power button to turn it on, the screen lights up and the operating system appears with all its amazing features and functions.
Steve Jobs revolutionized the computer market by focusing on design - to make it user-friendly. Mac and iPod had aesthetics that came off the utilitarian roots of PC makers. While Microsoft controlled only software that worked on computers, Apple wanted to control everything: both the hardware and the software of its products. Apple developed its own Mac operating system based on NeXT, as well as the appearance of your computer.
Fast forward almost 20 years ahead, and it will not be difficult to understand why this was a great idea. The iPhone has changed not only what we think about the appearance of our devices, but also about how we interact with them. The iPhone, along with its iOS operating system, is a marvel of hardware and software, as well as design, combined together.
The physical equipment of our devices at the present time, mainly fades into the background, compared with the software. What we can do on our phones depends on which applications we installed there. Applications (software) is what makes our devices so indispensable to us.
Apple’s intention to fully own the ecosystem of its products makes them so responsive and easy to use. It's hard to see all the features of their devices, because they are abstract. They live in this virtual world, with which many of us are not too familiar. To evaluate the hardware, we are given such indicators as, for example, the frequency of the processor, measured in Gigahertz, but we do not have the appropriate criterion for evaluating software.
Modern software has an incredibly complex structure. What is connected with the creation of UX , which we consider to be intuitive, is in fact built with the help of super-heavy tasks of information technology. Making computers do human things is really a challenge that spawned the entire artificial intelligence industry and many others.
Let me rephrase the words of Marc Andreessen (Marc Andreessen) “the software devours the world” into “the software has already eaten the world”.
Software is in everything and everywhere.People are used to things that we can see and touch. We live in the physical world of cars, washing machines, telephones and hair dryers. All of this is hardware — physical tools, machinery, and equipment. The hardware is a real material physical entity, limited to certain characteristics. But at some point we started going against the hardware limitations. VCRs in the 90s were great for recording what was shown on television (so you can watch what was recorded later) while you were directly at the TV with the remote in hand to press the record button when the show began. Wouldn't it be even better if you could record something on TV without pressing the record button? Would it be cool to tell your VCR to start recording at 7 pm and stop at 8 pm so you can go, for example, to have dinner? I think it would be much better.
Well, it turns out that in order to tell the hardware what to do, you had to program it - you needed software. We began to expand the capabilities of the equipment, programming it and creating software. A computer is essentially a smart calculator. What gives computers their power depends on what you can program for them — calculate the flight path of the rocket or calculate the bank records of customers for accounting purposes.
Early software was developed specifically for the specific application for which it will be used, and the equipment on which it will work. If you have written part of the accounting software for company A, it is unlikely that the same software product will work in company B without much improvement. The software did not differ portability at that time.
Microsoft coming
Bill Gates foresaw that an increasing number of computers being produced would need appropriate software that would handle the core internal processes of the CPU , RAM, and disk storage. This would allow developers to focus on creating applications that solve user problems, instead of writing common code to manage computer hardware, such as things like reading / writing files. The disk operating system, known as DOS , had to solve this particular problem, thus setting the stage for a real boom in the PC market at the end of the 20th century — the emergence of Windows. Bill Gates did not invent the Operating System (OS) as a concept, but he undoubtedly made it the main one.
Paul Allen and Bill Gates (1981)
Software reached a peak of popularity in the 90s, and Microsoft dominated this market. Her Office suite was installed by almost everyone, and this made management work much more efficient and productive. Computers were very utilitarian and focused on work tasks rather than games. Personal computers, as we know them now, were still in their infancy. PCs became more and more useful as more and more software was written for them. Various applications, such as word processing, spreadsheet, solitaire, and ultimately web browsing applications, expanded the possibilities of what you could do on your computer. All computers of the time looked the same - cream towers with corresponding hefty CRT monitors.
Apple's coming
Turn off your iPhone, and it will become a very shiny and very expensive paperweight. Only when you hold the power button to turn it on, the screen lights up and the operating system appears with all its amazing features and functions.
Steve Jobs revolutionized the computer market by focusing on design - to make it user-friendly. Mac and iPod had aesthetics that came off the utilitarian roots of PC makers. While Microsoft controlled only software that worked on computers, Apple wanted to control everything: both the hardware and the software of its products. Apple developed its own Mac operating system based on NeXT, as well as the appearance of your computer.
Fast forward almost 20 years ahead, and it will not be difficult to understand why this was a great idea. The iPhone has changed not only what we think about the appearance of our devices, but also about how we interact with them. The iPhone, along with its iOS operating system, is a marvel of hardware and software, as well as design, combined together.
The physical equipment of our devices at the present time, mainly fades into the background, compared with the software. What we can do on our phones depends on which applications we installed there. Applications (software) is what makes our devices so indispensable to us.
Apple’s intention to fully own the ecosystem of its products makes them so responsive and easy to use. It's hard to see all the features of their devices, because they are abstract. They live in this virtual world, with which many of us are not too familiar. To evaluate the hardware, we are given such indicators as, for example, the frequency of the processor, measured in Gigahertz, but we do not have the appropriate criterion for evaluating software.
Modern software has an incredibly complex structure. What is connected with the creation of UX , which we consider to be intuitive, is in fact built with the help of super-heavy tasks of information technology. Making computers do human things is really a challenge that spawned the entire artificial intelligence industry and many others.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/438432/