Women in Technology

Article:		What Is Web 2.0
Subject:		The end of the Software Release Cycle?
Date:		2007-06-04 22:00:24
From:		mcgmatt
What web have you been surfing for the past 15 years? Even in what I call Web 1.0 and you must call Web 0.0 (the static web with Lynx, Mosaic, and little to no user interaction), the web changed as it needed to change, never in versions. The fact that flickr deploys changes every half hour is unsurprising. If I worked on only one site all day long every day, I would do the same, whether it was me in 1997 or 2007. If anything, the Software Release Cycle is more prevalent now than it's ever been. ASP.NET brings hardcore C++ developers into the world of the web, and some of them are so unfamiliar with the web that they build installers to deploy websites. Funny, yet sad. The word "beta" has caught on because it bears the connotation that if the site breaks, it's not the developers' fault for not testing properly, it's the users' fault for not exposing the bug earlier. Brilliant.

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• The end of the Software Release Cycle?
  2007-06-12 17:47:19  -herbO- [View]
  
  
  I guess I am an old dog. No better, make that a very old, old dog. I used the internet (ARPANET) the first time in 1974. By then it was just three years old. I was with the WWMCCS (World Wide Military Command and Control System) then working out of Germany. I would connect (guess the term today is remote access) to other sites around the world running various applications generating reports using our database and their resources during their slow periods (while they were in their beds sleeping). The term then was “time-sharing” (think this could be coming back with the creation of “server farms”). Big processes were broken out to the other sites, returning their results for assembling into a final report or further processing to create a final product. It had wideband, encrypted communication on dedicated communication circuits. I wonder if this could be in the Guinness Record Book for the largest intranet at that time. No, the term intranet was an unknown then, but it appears the internet developed from the intranet and not the other way around. It was here I volunteered to take on the job managing the data with a title of Operator-Analyst (today’s title is DBA). Now everyone confesses to be a DBA after one execution of “CREATE TABLE.”
  
  
  
  I left that command in 1980, but rejoined it in 1983 under its new longer name. The abbreviated name was WIC. It was an acronym, with part of its definition already an acronym. The “W” represented WWMCCS, and IS was the representation of Information System. During this hitch, I volunteered to be the administrator for a computer mail system (email) as no one knew what the job title required. Training was conducted by BBN (Bolt, Beranek and Newman), the project developers. The instructors/trainers were all MIT graduates. I got a very good UNIX education.
  
  
  
  Anyway, how can there be version assignments, with such fast changing landscapes. How or when or what triggers the move to the next increment value before and after the “dot?” The community would be better off as to a timeline form to document it like that at http://www.computerhistory.org/exhibits/internet_history/. Identify the Web as Web2004, Web2005, etc. If you notice, Microsoft uses the decade value for its releases. This way there can be no argument over a silly dot and the numbers surrounding it.