Self Same computers - test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

6 Sep 2001

In response to my comment of:
...
 No doubt the auto industry had a very similar time of
it and today 
cars are largely identical except for things like body styling and 
number of cup holders. So what used to be special and unique, is now 
common and mundane. 
At 04:19 PM 9/6/2001 -0400, Jeff Hellige wrote:
...
 	My only problem with that analogy is that automobiles
are 
fairly fixed as to what you can use them for, while computers on the 
other hand are bounded only by the imagination and talent of the 
programmers. 
Except that over 95% of "end user" computers purchased today are _not_ bought by
programmers. And what non-programmers do with computers _is_ fixed, and as many on this
list have complained it gets harder and harder every year to find enough information to
actually program these things at a level deeper than Visual Basic script. 

So what I predict, is that in the near future (probably 1 to 2 but certainly less than 5
years) you will only see "computers" sold as either big-bad-ass servers, or
small embeddedable controllers. The middle ground, the so called "Personal
Computer" will cease to exist as a general purpose machine. And only the programmers
will notice.

--Chuck