🚀 go-pugleaf

1980. Hardly any Unix systems around. No DOS. What's a PARC? Clearly the  
dominant computer system software is IBM <pick one> or that new DEC VMS that's  
doing so well. People will program in FORTRAN or this Pascal, except for the  
hoard of Cobol folk. Command lines are all we know but we might see graphics.  
The future is merely an extrapolation of the present.

Or perhaps we should pay attention to this activity over in the corner with  
Apple?

Come on now. The future is as much DOS as it is IBM mainframe systems, DEC VMS,  
or Apple IIs. Microsoft has a better business plan than IBM, DEC, or Apple for  
maintaining some form of leadership in computer system software, but the game  
will change and DOS will not be the leader. Count on it. Certainty. The only  
alternative is stagnation of the computer industry - and the historical lesson  
is that we are due for a whole bunch of change before that happens.

In 10 years people will point out in how inside this new #1 you can find bits  
of DOS, but by now most people don't even know what computer system software is  
all about. It is just as likely as anything else on the horizon that the future  
is NeXTstep, and just as unlikely at this early stage of the future.

The only thing that seems to survive each decade of change is Cobol. If you  
*want* stability and ease of predicting the future based on the present, become  
a Cobol data processing professional.

Mark R. Thomsen