Are Software Developers Becoming a Commodity?
Building a Web Site in the Dark Ages
Back in the 1990′s, the World Wide Web experienced an explosive period of growth; it was a renaissance age that helped shape the Internet as we know it today. However, as we look back now, that period was also akin to medieval times, in terms of the tools and technologies that people had to work with. In those formative days, it required a full-fledged, hardcore techie to set up a web site with basic content (and not just becuase of all the annoying animated images). If you wanted to build a fully functional e-commerce site to sell seven varieties of pet rock, you were looking at a major investment. That kind of project required a team of people with experience in a wide range of skills, including alien disciplines such as Perl, CGI and UNIX .
Of course, back then the term e-commerce site had not yet come into usage. People were still talking about the information superhighway, and you could only access it through primitive devices that prevented you from talking on the phone. No one had ever heard of blogs or social media, even though early forms of both already existed. There was certainly no Google to help you google, no Twitter to tweet with, and no Facebook to offer you endless diversion. Read more…