PDC. I'm ready for a revolution. Impress me. Blow me away..
 I'm
ready for a change. I'm ready to be impressed. If you know me, I'm all
about Microsoft. I dig them, their tech, especially their people. While
I've worked in Java on Solaris talking to Mainframes, I really cut my teeth on
writing thunking code during
the 16-bit/32-bit transition. I know I'm not an "old timer." I've never
seen a punch card. (Although I've read Cryptonomicon.
;) ) I'm Generation
X or Y, not Generation
U or V.
I'm from a middle place. I'm younger than some, but older than others.
I've coded on TRS-80s, TI99/4a, C64 and Apple.
I've used 8" floppies. I've
lived in DOS from >=
version 3. I've run NeXT, Amiga, GEOS, CP/M, OS/2, Desqview, Windows
3.0, 3.1, 3.11. I've run Snowball, Chicago, Nashville and Memphis,
worked in Daytona and Cario.
I love Whistler, look forward
to Longhorn and
really don't understand how Blackcomb fits
in. I scored 60.85% on the geek
test. No doubt, you and I are alike.
I was on AOL 1.0, Compuserve, GEnie, Prodigy,
all from DOS. I've surfed with Lynx,
read mail with pine.
I ran Mosaic,
I now run Firebird. I ran vi, emacs, pico, PaperClip, WordStar, WP5.1,
and Office 2003 Beta.
I had 8k of RAM and now I have 1.5 gigs of RAM. I had no hard drive, then a Winchester
Hard Drive, now I have 425+
Gigabytes at my desk. I had a keyboard,
then a mouse,
then a mouse with two buttons, now a wireless
mouse and keyboard with 5 buttons and a scrolly-thing.
I remember Shift-F7 would print in Wordperfect, I'm not sure why I haven't overwritten
that mental cluster with more useful information. Certainly I've at least marked
the braincell for deletion with the first character as E5h or
something. Now I have a GUI, which brings me the the point of this rant. I
certainly haven't seen it all, but darnit I've seen some of it.
I admit it, while I'm privvy to many a Microsoft Pre-Alpha, I have not seen anything
of Lornhorn's "real" UI,
nor what I'm really interested in - Avalon.
If you do one thing before you go to PDC -
look at the demos of Mac OS X's Panther.
What I want is for Avalon to blow this away.
I want to be impressed. I want a WHOLE new world. I want to see some Microsoft
UI Research and Usability to
really come to a dramatic fruition. I know Avalon is a next-gen
graphics subsystem, but I want to see what totally new UI paradigms (read: moving
past Windowing and the Start Menu)
can be built on it. I want to make my 256
meg Video Card dual-head Video
Card WORK.
I'm coming to PDC thoroughly hoping and expecting to be impressed with the promise
of the future. Am I impatiently expecting a revolution in
UI, while Avalon may be a just stepping stone on the way to...?
Will I be disappointed?
[ComputerZen.com]
Very good collection of retro links!
10:35:43 PM Google It!  - See Also: Programming Trackback:
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