Tag: technology

I just paid off my mobile phone. In my case, this is a phone from Google Fi, which provides fantastic service for me. The phone works well in any country I travel to, without any extra roaming costs outside the US for data. That works well, since it’s a data device, and not really a voice device for me. Even overseas, lots of my calls are through some data service, like Facebook Messenger.

The decision for me now is whether to upgrade my phone. I’ve been getting some promotions and I’ve seen some deals from other retail outlets on phones, so I’ve been considering changing my Galaxy S20 for an S22 (perhaps plus) or a Pixel 6. There have been some improvements in cameras, and those are really the only change I’d notice.

Mobile devices have mostly become a commodity for me. The screen is a certain size, and the camera has a quality level, but outside of this, I don’t know that I’ve noticed much of a change in how I use the device or what I notice in quite a few years. If the screen and camera are the same, one phone is fairly interchangeable with another. Even the battery doesn’t seem to change that much between phones.

I think the same thing is true for databases for many of us. A lot of applications, and even developer T-SQL, target the basics of what a relational database platform provides. I suspect most of our needs could be served by MySQL or PostgreSQL as well as SQL Server. Apart from changing the dialect of DDL and DML we write, all those systems work well. In fact, I suspect most of what is run against the SQL Servers backing SQL Server Central could work against an older version such as 2005 or perhaps even 2000.

Some of you use newer features. Plenty of people have learned to use Window functions and the OVER() clause. Some of you might use In-memory tables. Others certainly need Availability Groups. However, a majority of code I see uses nothing newer than a CTE, which means they could run in SQL Server 2005.

A new version of SQL Server is coming later this year. SQL Server 2022 is in preview, and there are some neat things in there. Do you need them for your application? Perhaps you could use them, but the better question is will you actually change how you write code to use the new features? Or change how you set up infrastructure? I’d hope that many of you would, but change is hard for humans, and developers struggle as much as others. We get stuck in our habits and tend to work as we have for years.

When is the technology platform, tool, service, or application you use “good enough” for most of your work? I don’t know, but I find myself less excited about newer tech in many cases. Perhaps because I’m old, or perhaps because my needs are relatively simple. Is that the case for your organization?

Steve Jones

Listen to the podcast at Libsyn, Stitcher, Spotify, or iTunes.

I saw a note recently that Panasonic had a data breach.  There was a time I had a number of Panasonic products, from music players to telephones. My wife had them as a client and got a few swag items in the early 2000s. However, I don’t often buy electronic appliances, and I haven’t seen the Panasonic brand name in some time.

As I approach the end of one year and the beginning of another, I find myself nostalgic for brands that I used to seek out. I read a biography of Akio Morita, founder of Sony a long time ago and I admired their products. At some point, I had a rack of Sony gear in high school, including the double cassette deck. I bought my first TV, a Sony, in college. I can’t remember the last time I picked up or used something from them, having moved on to Apple for most of my music needs and Samsung for TVs.

Nokia and Motorola used to be the phones to buy, and they aren’t really in today’s conversations. Palm Pilot and Blackberry devices were on belts in purses everywhere. Today I know none in use.

Radio Shack was where I shopped regularly for all sorts of parts to fix things. I grew up with an Atari for games, a Commodore 64 for programming, and lots of floppy disks. I remember learning I could punch a hole in a disk case to make it double-sided. I used to drive to Blockbuster when I wanted to see a movie. I wish they had somehow found a way to transition and compete with Netflix.

I used to covet Sun Workstations, a huge company that no longer exists. I bought and assembled quite a few Compaq servers. One of my early jobs had me helping the boss use Alta Vista to search the burgeoning web on Netscape Navigator. For that matter, ESDI, IDE, and SCSI, and even spinning disks are no longer a part of my world.

As I walk down memory lane, I think about this thing that used to sit on my bedside table. From middle school until about 4 or five years ago, I had an “alarm clock” that woke me up in the morning. First no-name analog ones, then Sharp, Sony, and other digital brands. First for paper routes, then school, then work. Now I use a smart watch with a vibrating alarm. That alarm clock device is one piece of technology my wife is glad doesn’t exist anymore.

Steve Jones

Listen to the podcast at Libsyn, Stitcher, Spotify, or iTunes.