Sorry I waited so long on this one, but... For me, it should be a date to *mourn*, not to celebrate. Now in fairness, the PC has brought us high-speed commodity computers. However, it has also dumbed-down a signficant portion of the field of computing. Inasmuch as the PC was created as a reaction to the Apple II, I must tell this story. I cow orker and I had been fixing the various cold solder joints on an IMSAI 8080 construction attempt done by the head of the Physics Department (and soon to be D-I-T). We'd run it successfully for a few weeks, and had begun using it in a Psych experiment involving reaction times. Then the 8212 went to heaven. We took it to the recently-opened Computerland, wherein a guy I mistook for an electronics technician (he was an MBA) rolled up his sleeves, heated up the iron, clipped off the fried 8212, soldered in a socket, plugged in a new chip... But I digress. While he was doing this, I was looking around the store, and saw the Doom of Computing in the form of a computer that didn't require a soldering iron to build and use- namely, an Apple II. The beginning of the end. I knew it then, and I was proved right. Again, it's nice to have fast, cheap computers, but I for one would have been just as happy for the next 20 years having fast, cheap TERMINALS to hook to the mainframes. And the continued high cost of entry would have kept from coming into existence an entire generation of self-taught (and poorly so) programmers who have and continue to crank out some of the worst software imaginable. In the halcyon days, most of the bad code was writtwn by the lusers themselves... Easy access to fast, cheap computers drove the genesis of an entire generation of self-taught programmers who didn't give a whit for structured programming or anything else that resembles a methodology, and who single-handedly changed the expectations that managers have about how quickly things get done. Sure RAD helped speed programming along, but not nearly as much just cutting corners... which the PC made easier... damn, I feel a song coming on again: -- obSimpsonSongLyric: Shary: If there's a task that must be done, Don't turn your tail and run, Don't pout, don't sob, Just do a half-assed job! If... you... cut every corner It is really not so bad, Everybody does it, Even mom and dad. If nobody sees it, Then nobody gets mad, Bart: It's the American way! Shary: The policeman on the beat Needs some time to rest his feet. Chief Wiggum: Fighting crime is not my cup of tea! Shary: And the clerk who runs the store Can charge a little more For meat! Apu: For meat! Shary: And milk! Apu: And milk! Both: From 1984! Shary: If... you... cut every corner, You'll have more time for play, Shary & OFF: It's the American waaaaay! -- No, not only will I not celebrate it, but I need to find a black armband to wear the rest of the month.