Comment by ghaff
2 days ago
It's a more mature industry.
I'm guessing the majority of people now in their 50s and 60s in computer-related careers had very eclectic jobs before settling down in computer-related stuff. After all, many never used computers at all until college or beyond.
My understanding is even in the early 2000s it was pretty much just firmware versus desktop software with a small niche for Mac developers.
Edit: my point was not that specialized software applications didn’t exist. It was that people were expected to be able to jump from stack to stack when they change roles in a way that has disappeared from modern job applications.
Plenty of server software being developed in the early 2000s. (Though minicomputers were mostly off the scene by then.)
Pretty much.
Well, and mainframes. And trading and financial systems. And numerical/scientific computing. And network services. And web sites and e-commerce. And flash, java applets, and browser plugins. And control systems. And operating systems and tooling. And cell phone applications. And games. And video/image/audio/music processing. etc etc
Oh, wait... maybe not!
So you’re saying that none of those roles could be cross hired in the early 2000s between any of the other roles?
That’s the point I was trying to make. Not that the software didn’t exist or people weren’t doing specialized applications.
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