Paul Krill
Editor at Large

Looking back over the years

news
Jan 28, 20052 mins

This month marks 10 years as a writer at InfoWorld for me. I thought it might be kind of fun to look back on the way things were in 1995:

* Spam was this rather tasty meat product that came in a steel can and had this gook on top of it.

* Steve Jobs was out at Apple.

* Bill Gates was worth only a few billion dollars.

* Sun Microsystems was a company on the rise.

* Hewlett-Packard, Digital Equipment, Compaq and Tandem were separate, competing companies.

* The World Wide Web was not pervasive.

* Linux was Lucy’s brother on “Peanuts”, with his name misspelled.

* Windows 95 was the most widely anticipated product of the year.

* The National Hockey League locked out its players.

* Phishing is what people did in a small boat on the lake.

* Novell NetWare was a critical product in my area of coverage.

Things sure look different now. But in some respects, things haven’t changed much. Windows still dominates the desktop (and the NHL has again locked out its players). Ten years from now, who knows what the IT landscape will look like? Will Microsoft be dominant or Linux? Or perhaps it will be something still being developed in some unknown developer’s garage?

The possibilities are endless.

Paul Krill

Paul Krill is editor at large at InfoWorld. Paul has been covering computer technology as a news and feature reporter for more than 35 years, including 30 years at InfoWorld. He has specialized in coverage of software development tools and technologies since the 1990s, and he continues to lead InfoWorld’s news coverage of software development platforms including Java and .NET and programming languages including JavaScript, TypeScript, PHP, Python, Ruby, Rust, and Go. Long trusted as a reporter who prioritizes accuracy, integrity, and the best interests of readers, Paul is sought out by technology companies and industry organizations who want to reach InfoWorld’s audience of software developers and other information technology professionals. Paul has won a “Best Technology News Coverage” award from IDG.

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