CODE: 5 Years Ago

And just like that, we've arrived at the last installment of our "30 Years of CODE" celebratory column. Wow. Time flies! Seems like "just the other day" we had our 30-year anniversary celebration in Orlando, yet that was in December of 2023. But it's even wilder to think back five or six years. "Just before the pandemic," really. How much has changed in those few short years!

- Markus Egger

Some things are very similar and some things are practically unrecognizable from just a short five years ago.

Operating Systems and General Tech

I usually start these columns looking back at operating systems. Truth be told, not all that much has changed in the last five years. We were using Windows 10 and Mac OS-X. We were using iOS and Android. And of course, we were using Linux. That is all very recognizable to us today. Things may have swung back toward the PC a bit since then, with the hype around tablets as a PC replacement having died down (although not gone away). Google’s Chrome Books didn’t take over the world, but they’re still around.

Even on the hardware side, things were relatively similar, at least for the consumer/user. Macs and PC-based hardware is similar to what we used five years ago. (Although ARM—advanced RISC machine—platforms have gained in importance since then, even in the Windows world, I’m typing this article on a modern Copilot + PC, running Windows 11 on an ARM chip.) Mobile platforms have steadily improved in performance and quality, but, by and large, we’ve gone through several years of “the fastest processor we’ve ever made,” and “the best camera our device ever had,” and “more memory than ever.” As if it was a surprise to anyone that the latest iPhone or Samsung Galaxy isn’t actually a step back in performance. Who would’a thunk?!?

The big elephant in the room is that half a decade ago, hardly anyone cared about artificial intelligence. Only people and companies with a special interest in the matter spent any time and money on it. At our