Blog Post, TDK's Week 1: Web Development Deja Vu; or, It's 1983 All Over Again

I was pleasantly surprised to discover that the latest web development technology is what I learned in 1983. UNIX is still used on the terminal. The mouse or trackpad isn't used; web developers are expected to type in everything from the keyboard, and somehow they don't get carpal tunnel syndrome. The students are using 13" MacBooks, about the same size screens as we had in the 1980s. Large or dual monitors are shunned. Laptop computers enable developers to work anywhere, yet they prefer to sit elbow to elbow in a co-working space, like we sat in the terminal ward. The preferred text editor is a new version of vi.

I'm going to grow a beard, buy a single-speed bike, and code on a PDP 11/70 with a VT100 DECscope terminal. Who needs more than 80 characters and 23 lines? I'll refer to the thing you save your files to as a "Winchester drive." I'll evangelize for ex! If anyone mentions vim I'll retort that real programmers use the colon prompt, not the visual editor. Git? We run backups on Saturday mornings, you can wait until then to retrieve the file you accidentily deleted. Social coding? Hah, real programmers don't have social skills!

UPDATE: Someone already thought of this. Cathode is a Mac app that makes your terminal window look like a 1980s terminal.