The dawn of the Citizen Coders
Software creation is no longer confined to trained developers; it's open to everyone. This new era of "citizen coders" will democratize innovation and empower people from all walks of life to build their own digital tools.
It was the year 1999, and the Y2K was upon us. Yet, inside the concrete heart of Instituto Superior Técnico in Lisbon, time stood still. The terminal room, a fluorescent-lit cocoon, hummed with the persistent whir of ancient technology. The world outside could have been falling apart, and we wouldn’t have noticed. For my companions and me, it was just us against the code. Three days and two nights without sleep etched shadows under our eyes. Our fingers danced over the keyboards, each clack a prayer to the gods of programming.
Pizza boxes were piled high beside terminals, a precarious tower that stood witness to our vigil. Our communication consisted of half-sentences and techno-jargon, with the occasional jubilant cry of “Yes!” as we squashed a particularly stubborn bug. It was a world absent of smartphones, where the glow of CRT monitors created our own kind of reality, bounded by lines of code and shared exhaustion.
