Strange coincidence. (I know, are there any other kinds). The web turned 25 this year and my indulgence in developing software for a living also turned 25 this year. No the two are not related at all. The first time I used the internet was over Compuserve sometime in 1997 - 17 years ago. I had already been writing software for a living for 8 years at that point.

It was a very different world of software development 25 years ago. There was no Internet. There was no Google. And obviously no Stack Overflow. I don't know how anyone wrote software in those days. I did but I don't now know how. I cannot write a line these days without googling about it first. In those days - I had to go to Mumbai every few months just to buy a programming book. And that book was all you had. It was your Internet, your Google, your Stack Overview, your usenet, your blogs, your everything combined. Your last hope. If the book failed you - you just had to spend the time to figure it out. You learned a lot but you had time to burn. Its different now. There is a thriving community of software developers or "coders". There are web sites, plethora of books, e-books, forums, message boards, blogs, podcasts, GitHub, Stackoverflow and whatever else you can think of. You are not alone. Far from it, its a bit too crowded.

The cycle of causality. In the late 90s, the advent of the internet disseminates information that enables the creation of websites and software that further promotes the internet. In the late 2000s we began our next upward spiral. The advent of the smartphone enables the creation of apps that promote smartphones and fuel the latest information explosion that further promotes apps. A brilliant, robust, self-feedback loop.

All of this works in the upward spiral which is where we are. Let's enjoy it while we can.

No one has any time to burn. There is no time to burn. You search, you find, you code, you move on.