From Accounts and Groups to the Cloud: A Personal View of Computing’s Transformation
I started programming on the HP 3000 in the 1980s, in a world where the boundaries of the system were clear, and I could see and control every part of it. My files lived in ACCOUNT.GROUP.FILENAME form — a structure so consistent I could picture the whole storage layout in my head. If a program needed a different input file, I’d use a single :FILE command to redirect it, and everything worked without recompiling.…