A Decade of Digital Development

As 2 × (2 × (22² + 22) − 2) dawned upon us, the increased digitisation of our culture, our lives and our history became more apparent than ever before. Meme it or not, a strange reflective energy spread over the masses.

With then-and-now challenges booming across social media. Packs of people pedantically posting pictures of how they have changed over ten years. Or, how little they've changed, apart from discovering how to use filters 😉

Meanwhile, the internet quietly took notes, in turn learning and feeding it’s data to little Criminal Minds-esque profiling robots. All the while attempting to disguise it's deviousness, as the sweet and delicious treats known as cookies.

For those who existed in a world before social media. A time when phones were not smart, and were considered ‘mobile’ if they were able fit in the passenger seat of your car.

My fellow survivors of the Y2K bug may have found themselves looking back how things have changed this millennium.

Should you remember further back then you are probably just miffed that 2015 has been, and gone, yet you still don’t own a hoverboard!

I too found myself in deep in reflection mode, squinting back through time to where all this Primitive stuff began.

Cue intro credits…

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The Internet, or specifically The World Wide Web, was created in the solitude of the snow-capped Swiss mountains. Born deep in the belly of CERN; the purpose-built headquarters of a rogue group of not-so-evil, possibly hot-chocolate swilling super-geniuses.

While difficult to pinpoint, partly due to redactions and classified documents, partly due to the distinct lack of a search feature in paper records. Experts agree that somewhere between 1989 and 1991 Sir Tim Berners-Lee, a decorated Colonel of the Geeksphere, took some advanced - possibly alien, technologies, created some new stuff (HTML), put it all together, and birthed the monster we now all know as The World Wide Web.

This was all to satisfy the information-sharing desires of researchers, or put simply, to appease the whims of a few mad scientists.

Eyewitnesses said that the exact moment The Web was invented occurred during a tea-break at CERN.

Therefore, its conception can be adequately represented by the following simple yet eloquent equation know as snacks constant:

Boffin plus Boffin, over a muffin equals The Web.

A stone's throw later, in 1993, against both Sir Tim’s recommendation and his vision, Mr Andreessen definitely introduced something new into the HTML Seman-TRIX.

The Mosaic Browser was released. With it, the <IMG> tag was unveiled.

This seemingly innocent piece of code opened a rift to a parellel Earth, another dimesion in the multi-media-verse. A web not bound by text alone.

low-res unicorns, and animated construction workers proclaiming “UNDER CONSTRUCTION” with more determination than most government infrastructure.

It began innocently enough: a photo here, a diagram there... but then. Flames. Glitter. Hamsters doing backflips in space.

It paved the way for every misused clipart image, every MySpace background that could blind a Victorian child, and every webpage that took five minutes to load, one image at a time, from the top down like a reverse digital striptease.

In short, the <IMG> tag changed the internet forever. And we still haven't recovered.

Then in 1994, under the watchful eye of Sir Tim, a not-so-secret international organisation named the W3C was formed.

Their purpose. To create and protect a set of standards for this new world of the web and to S.H.I.E.L.D them from deviants.

This happened just when the world (wide web) would need it the most.

In the year 1995, Microsoft the nefarious giant, released a Titan which would later wreak havoc in every corner of The Web.

It’s name was Internet Explorer and it’s arrival marked the beginning of the Browser Wars.

In retaliation the diligent boffins at CERN, teamed up with the W3C in 1996 to produce the Jisaw web server. A new headquarters for The Web to live and to further grow.

Later the same year, the not-so-secret “Nice Dres-CSS” project was completed and the W3C released guidelines on how The Web should be dressed.

The Web now had an official costume.

Finally, in the summer of 1997. Like the Avengers in glasses, The European Computer Manufacturer’s Association came together and gave the world JavaScript.

Or, the general-purpose programming language formerly known as ECMAScript.

From here on the developers “periodic table” of markup, style sheet and scripting languages has more or less remained the same.

So let us skip forward a decade. To where my digital adventure began and I find myself with one of the most dangerous things known to man. An opinion ?.

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At times, when discussing jobs I’ve done or where I’ve been so far in this life, I feel it resembles the “I used to be one” line from Mrs Doubtfire.

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I started working younger than most. I worked (and lurked) around farms and an old 17th-century Inn throughout school. I then worked as a chef throughout at college (media studies) before spending the ensuing years ‘entertaining’ revellers across the UK and Balearics.

There is, of course, a part of everone that believes the world has something important to show you. That there's something 'out there' you haven't found yet but is waiting and wanting to be be discoverd. spending the ensuing years entertaining revellers across the UK and Balearics.

Circa 2004, feeling I had spent sufficient time “finding myself”, I thought I best get a normal job. To do normal things like normal people do.

Henceforth, my Development journey began. Initially as a Change Analyst where, quite accidentally, I would learn (X)HTML and a few other bits while writing validation macros.

Back then, systems like this powered world banking.

Moving on, after spending a brief time as a stockbroker, I decided I shall turn myself into a web Designer.

Little did I know, given the extensive number of popular Programming, Scripting and Markup Languages that can be involved in delivering a simple little web page to you. This would be no simple task.

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Circa 2008 I would have produced my first commercial projects for clients. Static websites, branding and the odd email template for local businesses.

At this point creating websites was much like the art of paper cutting.

Generally a .psd or .ai design file was created, passed to the developer. The developer in turn went about cutting said design into tiny little jigsaw-like pieces.

These pieces of the jigsaw would then be rammed into a table to imitate layout.

Yes, I faked it! Everybody did. What you, the end-user, were looking at back then was a spreadsheet in fancy-dress.

Then, just when you thought you had a beautiful website to share with the world, that darn Titan IE would show up and take a huge MS-DOS all over it!

To accommodate browser quirks and the various incarnations of The Titan a plethora of x-browser fall-backs and hacks needed to be applied.

A large proportion of the websites, games and apps I created in the first few years were built with Flash ActionScript, a language which will officially be ‘Deceased’ by the end of this year.

To the thoroughly modern codemonkey, web development can be seen as more like dressing a skeleton. But must be done from the far side of the room.

Like natural languages, the programming languages used to control machines must conform to rules of syntax and semantics.

Despite there been noticeable buzz surrounding Ruby on Rails a decade ago PHP has not only endured but seemingly won this battle.

Behind the browser’s veil. C languages have finally taken the top spot from Java and it’s persistent dance of a thousand updates.

( ? c:/dos/run ? )

JavaScript has leaked into everything and is known by many names.

Of course fashions have changed over the past 23 years.

HTML, CSS and JavaScript as languages have all evolved.

They don’t stay the same for long before a revised set of standards and specifications arise. Pathing the way to the promised land of peak performance and efficiency.

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