No Hardrware

Over decades of my software journey there has always been the underlying hardware. And I have had this opportunity to work on software that was always benefiting from understanding the hardware. Since the years of ZX Spectrum through the era of spinning disks, when you had to understand things like rotating platters and an elevator of data running up to the read/write head, up till today's complex and challenging, still resource - constrained embedded SoCs.

But just recently I realized for some young generation developers, the world looks like there is no hardware. I mean, you need a screen and a keyboard, and an Internet connection, but... that is it. The rest is just software. Create a Github account, create an AWS account, write some code, commit, start an AWS instance and voila, you have your software running. Where? What a question, ask the DNS service, it will give the IP...

With the advent of the Windows Virtual Desktop, it runs all the way to... the desktop.

I guess over a couple of years there will be 10 kinds of computer users: those who are always connected and run everything virtualized and those who are capable of being offline some of the time, by running apps such as text editors or compilers on their local machines. And this 2nd kind will soon become extinct...