The fourth decade of programming: Bigger boxes, smaller talk
Too Long; Didn't Read
In the eighties, a new kind of computer started to become common, the <em>workstation.¹</em> Workstations were powerful professional versions of personal computers that cost as much as a <em>new</em> car. Consumer personal computers only cost as much as a <em>used</em> car. There were SGIs used for engineering tasks such as digital animation, Apollos for newspaper layout, Suns running computing centers and computer-aided design (CAD), and the NeXT workstation which became the world’s first web server. Here’s an interesting fact: from a programmers perspective the iPhone is the direct descendent of NeXT.