In college, one of my assignments was to create an SQL statement parser.
Then in the late 90s, I started building E-commerce systems using MSQL (not Microsoft SQL, this was MSQL, an early open-source SQL database).
Then by 2000 I was using mySQL.
Now I’m developing with CockroachDB, a web-scale SQL database that can scale to thousands of nodes comprising a cluster, to seamlessly scale performance and capacity.
The difference between SQL in 1987 and SQL in 2024 is astonishing. But even bigger is the gulf between the SQL era and the pre-SQL era.
When I started college, SQL had not been around that long – the first commercial SQL relational database had only been released 8 years earlier.
Since then, my entire career has involved either being adjacent to, or in the middle of, SQL databases.
I consider this standard and all of the systems built to that standard part of my technological milieu. Prior to the 80s, databases looked nothing at all like any SQL database today. Programmers from either side of that divide might look at the other’s technology, and ask, “what the heck is that?!”
Other things in my technological milieu – Unix, ubiquitious gigabit internet, personal computers and phones with supercomputer power.
These technologies shape how you approach problems, how you view the whole technological world. And, they are now fantastically complex. So much so that no one person can be an expert on all aspects, as was the case in the 80s.
Will AI become part of the next generation’s technological milieu? Will this serve to further separate the technology creators from the technology consumers?
When I first started out in this industry, the promise of computing was: “anyone can write software now”. When the internet first started, its promise was: “anyone can publish information now to everyone in the world”.
Both of these are under attack – the former through the sheer technological complexity of writing with modern, bloated frameworks on modern, bloated operating systems – we have 50 years of accumulation of bloat bloat bloat on Unix systems, 50 years of things you’ve learned. The latter through the increasing centralization of control of publishing by a handful of search engine and social media companies.
How can we give the next generation a milieu that is simple enough so that, once again, every person has a shot at being a software author, and a content creator?