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It seems that every time somebody discounts a boom in IT, and calls it a fad, there is another one a couple years later.
I remember when everybody had a commodore64, myself included, and people back then thought that was as good as it was going to get.
Who ever thought city bulletin boards would eventually turn into the internet. (They didn't, but you get what I'm saying)
Right now .NET is giving a boost to those people that may have gotten discouraged by VC++ or MFC, and kind of empowers the less able to compete with larger development stratagies with the libraries of prewritten code similar to Java.
I personally hate .NET because it can't be statically linked like MFC, and the framework is huge, and it's not even sent out with ANY MS OS, and bla, and bla, and bla, BUT IT HAS GREAT POTENTIAL.
As does IT in the future. My 2 cents.
MSIL sucks
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Since most of us are programmers or doing IT work,we indulge in this field,can we be wise enough to reflect on what happened and what is happening and what will happen?
If I am not saying wrong,the dotcom boom is not boosted by programmers or IT relating employer or employee .
What are your thoughts? 
this is my signature for forums quoted from shog*9:
I can't help but feel, somewhere deep within that withered, bitter, scheming person, there is a small child, frightened, looking a way out.
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I agree that most programmers will have a slightly skewed view, but I do believe that the results of the survey show that most understand that the dotcom thing was just a fad.
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I am sure the golden time will be appear,
we must dream the dreams of future than the history of past.
in Msn Messenger : renji12renji@hotmail.com
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I hope the heady dotcom days never return. Heady growth cannot be indefinitely sustained.
That being said, I believe the dotcom boom and bust was caused in large part by a horde of greedy, technologically disadvantaged people, many of whom invested in companies without doing their homework. To say that the software industry is "now, like any other" could imply it was the nature of the field that caused this economic rise and fall. Instead, I believe it was the lack of applying basic business principles.
I think we'd have seen similar economic upheaval in the automotive industry if someone claimed to have invented an efficient, reliable and inexpensive automobile engine that ran on air. Detroit would be hiring like mad and the airwaves would be full of ads for cars.
I think there's a lot of VC money on the sidelines, but funding new ventures has become a conservative and accountable process. I work for a well funded startup that survived the boom-bust cycle. The company provides a real solution to a real business problem, and is run conservatively. I also worked for a startup that didn't succeed due to bad timing, some inexperience, and (imho) a lot of arrogance.
/ravi
Let's put "civil" back in "civilization"
http://www.ravib.com
ravib@ravib.com
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Ravi Bhavnani wrote:
Heady growth cannot be indefinitely sustained.
Why not? Heady growth can be sustained as long as worker productivity continues to rise exponentially. The key is that material goods (food, energy, computers) need to be produced for exponentially declining unit prices. It cannot be sustained forever, because in the long run, the second law of thermodynamics will catch up with us, but as Keynes said, "In the long run we're all dead." In other words, there is no good reason why the world economy could not show steady exponential growth of, say, 20% for several centuries.
The problem with the dotcom boom is that most people were working on advertising and distribution. Even if you cut distribution costs to zero, the cost of the goods distributed need to be attacked for boundless growth to take place. At the same time, the exponential growth in computer use that the boosters championed relied on exponential growth of energy use (Google alone uses as much electricity as a medium-sized city) and energy prices were not falling exponentially.
Similarly, the dot-com boom was doomed because unlike computer hardware, in software did not follow Moore's law: for example, in Microsoft's product line, the Windows and Office products are certainly not following Moore's law in exponentially declining price and exponentially increasing power.
My computer has 1000 times more memory, 10,000 times larger hard disk, and runs well over 1000 times as fast as my first 4.77 MHz 8086/8087 box. I can diagonalize matrices in seconds that took weeks on that earlier computer, but Microsoft Word 2000 does not help me get 1000 times more work done than the version of Word I bought in 1985. Excel 2000 offers very little that I could not do just as well with a late-1980s version of Quattro Pro. This is where we see the fallacy of the dotcom boom.
The key question, then, is why computer hardware manufacturing, unlike anything else in our economy (even unlike software), does shows a seemingly endless capacity to follow a rapid exponential growth of productivity.
Why couldn't Science, in the long run, serve
As well as one's uncleared lunch-table or
Mme X en Culottes de Matador? James Merrill
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"The key question, then, is why computer hardware manufacturing, unlike anything else in our economy (even unlike software), does shows a seemingly endless capacity to follow a rapid exponential growth of productivity."
One word: competion. Look how AMD and Intel are at each others throats trying to release the fastest processor
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Anonymous wrote:
One word: competion. Look how AMD and Intel are at each others throats trying to release the fastest processor
So why isn't there competition in other industries? I would have thought that software and automobile companies faced just as much competition, but neither one has Moore's law.
Why couldn't Science, in the long run, serve
As well as one's uncleared lunch-table or
Mme X en Culottes de Matador? James Merrill
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Well, he was comparing the rate of groth between the SW and HW industries, not the Automobile industry.
The example he used was why hasn't Word improved 1000 times, I'm saying becuase there is no cometition. Most people are forced into buying Word, one way or the other, so why should MS put so much effort into improving it? Also, when you have a companies with competing products, there is more motivation in creating new features. Also you have to try harder to please the customer, that means these new features have to be genuinely useful (i.e. not gimmicky rubbish like Clippy)
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First, I was comparing the computer hardware industry to all other industries: "The key question, then, is why computer hardware manufacturing, unlike anything else in our economy (even unlike software)..." I just used software as one example.
Second, in what way are most people "forced into buying Word?" There is nothing stopping people from using Word Perfect, Ami, Star Office, etc. As I noted in my first post, there is very little in the current version of Excel that wasn't in the version of Borland Quattro Pro that I bought back in the late 1980s for less that a hundred bucks. Borland was competing for its survival, but could not come up with a product that significantly improved on the original or competed effectively with Excel. Neither could Lotus with 123.
Why couldn't Science, in the long run, serve
As well as one's uncleared lunch-table or
Mme X en Culottes de Matador? James Merrill
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Jonathan Gilligan wrote:
It cannot be sustained forever,
Yes, that is exactly what I suggested. 
Btw, I was specifically referring to revenue growth. A new industry usually sparks a flurry of speculation, wild growth, and eventually equilibrium (not to be confused with flat revenues).
Although technology continues to improve and get more powerful, the retail cost (and hence the increase in revenues derived from the sale of technology products) eventually plateaus. This applies to everything from cars, PCs, HDTVs and even space shuttle missions.
/ravi
Let's put "civil" back in "civilization"
http://www.ravib.com
ravib@ravib.com
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I completely agree with you about "forever," in the literal sense, but would suggest that from our perspective the difference between 200 years and forever is not terribly important.
On revenue growth, if the GDP is growing exponentially faster than the population, then revenues in at least one sector will grow exponentially.
Why couldn't Science, in the long run, serve
As well as one's uncleared lunch-table or
Mme X en Culottes de Matador? James Merrill
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sorry chris - just winding you up!
"When the only tool you have is a hammer, a sore thumb you will have."
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Philip Fitzsimons wrote:
sorry chris - just winding you up!
that's just evil  
Nitron
_________________________________________--
message sent on 100% recycled electrons.
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i just love how upset he gets at out of area posts
"When the only tool you have is a hammer, a sore thumb you will have."
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I have a big red delete button with your name on it Philip
cheers,
Chris Maunder
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spoilsport
"When the only tool you have is a hammer, a sore thumb you will have."
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...'screenshot' sums it up perfectly...
Shog9
------
So they took me down to the gallows
And this boy, he said to me:
"Why do you smile, when the rope's around your neck?"
I said, "I tell you boy, when i get back..."
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.....HYPE. It did wonders for Star Wars!
The Internet, whats that? Is it a car?
"There's a statistical theory that if you gave millions of monkeys typewriters and set them to work, they'd eventually come up with the complete works of Shakespere. Thanks to the Internet, we know this isn't true."
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Well, I just hope I will be in the business half the time star wars is around... (I hope to retire much sooner, which connects to the hope that the good times will come back, though I doubt it very much)
N
Noam Ben Haim
Web Developer
Intel
noam.ben.chaim@intel.com
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I read in last weeks Computer Weekly that more CEO's think that IT is important for the success of their businesses than IT directors - must be the hype, but this should help IT along. Apparently it also gives more CEO's sleepless nights
I've always heard that there was an idea behind Win ME... I still can't figure out what that was... anyboy know??? I;ve herad the idea was that it was supposed to be n operating system but I doubt this. - Brian Delahunty
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I'm of the opinion that dotcoms were a huge gap in the market and those that jumped in it first took the cash home. But like any fad, the market calms down and the whole thing is over.
This happens over and over in all sorts of markets, it happened in communications and then mobile comms, it happened way back with trains and then underground railways.
It will happen again in the IT world, probably repeatedly, but it won't be dotcoms. If I knew what it was going to be, I wouldn't tell you, I'd be down the bank getting a business loan. Unfortunately I don't and I'll just try to ride on the back of it when it comes .
Paul
I think there're pieces of me you've never seen - Tori Amos, Tear in Your Hand
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Paul Riley wrote:
This happens over and over in all sorts of markets, it happened in communications and then mobile comms, it happened way back with trains and then underground railways.
Amen to that! And the sooner us IT nutters stop thinking we are special, the better.
Paul Watson
Bluegrass
Cape Town, South Africa
Ray Cassick wrote:
Well I am not female, not gay and I am not Paul Watson
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you very special paul
"When the only tool you have is a hammer, a sore thumb you will have."
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at least in the US was too much money in the stock market looking for the latest fad. In fact, the latest stock market boom was a fad.
Now that everyone has been burned, maybe we can get back to the basics.
Tim Smith
I'm going to patent thought. I have yet to see any prior art.
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