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To: Amy J who wrote (178781)	7/21/2004 3:42:47 PM
From: BelowTheCrowd	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 186894

> Most small businesses I know haven't upgraded in years through the period of "Austerity" so many are overdue. It's still cheaper for SMBs to chuck the old laptops (or PCs) and just buy new units. But replacement of the units gets pushed out a tad longer than at large companies. What's your definition of "overdue?" Part of my argument (which I believe you and I were discussing a while back, before I disappeared into the project from hell for more than a year) is that the lack of a software imperative has changed the definition of "overdue." In the 90s, we had three upgrade cycles (roughly one every 3 years) driven by software changes that demanded new hardware. In the absence of that sort of software pressure, the definition of "overdue" has changed drastically. These days, "ready for replacement" tends to mean "no longer economical to repair as opposed to replace." And I'll note that we "sell" the cost of new units to management not as an "upgrade" but rather as replacement of worn out units. The same as replacement of company vehicles, furniture or anything else. I couldn't sell an "upgrade" to anybody given that the existing base performs just find. Yes, there are exceptions. Here and there we replace PCs for "power users" who have the skills, knowledge and responsibility to make use of greater power. On occasion we replace desktops with notebooks as the nature of peoples' jobs change. My most recent company (~$150 revenues, 800 employees) has seen little reason to upgrade, and seems to be in step with most companies of similar size or larger that I've talked to. As I'm currently looking for new projects, I'm in the unusual situation of being able to check out many companies. Programming languages in 1968??? Well before my time, but mostly yes, you would have been talking about mainframes, no relational databases and older procedural languages. COBOL was already out there as the primary IBM mainframe language and ALGOL had been in wide use on some others since 1960, but the more modern languages we use today didn't exist. Quite a bit was still done in assembler code, even into the 70s and when I got started in the mid-80s we still had some systems programmer types who worked exclusively in assembler code. Pascal came about in 1970, and C at roughly the same time. BASIC also existed, but had very limited application in business. Commercial software development probably got started out in the 50s and picked up in the 60s. The field has gone through many different phases and philosophies over the years.

To: Amy J who wrote (178781)	7/22/2004 4:00:04 AM
From: brushwud	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 186894

what type of software programming languages were around back in 1968 - mainframe stuff, right? What year was the field of software development even invented? I thought of Grace Hopper & FORTRAN ("it was her great idea that programs could be written in a language that was close to English rather than in machine code or in languages close to machine code, such as the assemblers of the time."), but Lady Ada Lovelace, "the only legitimate child of the poet Lord Byron" and an associate of Charles Babbage, is generally credited as being the first programmer: nationmaster.com This reminds me that the British wanted to be called programmers because it sounded more professional, but the Americans have generally thought of themselves simply as coders.