The ancient egyptians invented rudimentary steam engines, and all they ever amounted to were curios. Just because something is invented, doesn't mean it is used to its full potential.
Yes, Dr. Atanasoff invented the computer back in, what the 40's was it? It took until the 60's before people started getting serious with mainframes, and another 20 years to invent the PC. All I can say is that you guys were really on the ball on capitalizing on this new technology.
Oh, and you definately did not teach GenX how to program. I, like almost all other coders, am self taught. The extent of my instruction ended with 10 CLS. I had to go and figure out how to code BasicA, Pascal, VBasic, C and C++ on my own. Not to mention the minor languages that are easy to learn like HTML. All the techs I know did it the same way, by experimentation. It is easier today, you see, GenX'ers thought up this idea of books that teach languages, much better then the old command dictionaries we had to work with in the 80's.
Most boomers realize that they are not the focal point of the Universe, but it seems you might have missed this one. The big contribution of the hippie generation is civil rights. The big contribution of genX is computers, we made them into what they are. If it weren't for us, we'd all be tapping away at green screens.
Now, I will give you a point you missed. Our boomer parents made the computers available to us to learn on. My wife had a Timex, and mine was a Texas Instruments. From these humble beginnings, we millions of Xers learned how to run software and networks. And now we make our services available to the companies you manage. Wonderful tool, capatilism is. |
