I’m a bit of a dinosaur when it comes to technology.
That might sound odd, especially since I know people who’ve been coding longer than I’ve been alive. But I can no longer pretend I’m the “young kid” to their seasoned vet status. I’m just… slightly less seasoned. And nothing has made that clearer than these last few weeks working on Wandrip.
So, for context, here’s a quick rundown of Jon’s Programmer History, which might help you understand why I’ve been so amazed by modern tools lately.
🕹️ 1995–2003: The Early Years
In 1995, I discovered a shareware app—possibly called Computer Magic—that let you script small animations. It blew my mind. I could tell the computer what to do, and it would do it. That summer, the programming bug bit hard.
By 1996, I was talking about computer programming for a science fair. In 1997, I finally began writing real software with Borland Delphi, making me one of the few in my generation who didn’t start with BASIC. I started with Pascal, specifically the object-oriented flavor used by Delphi.
Through the late ’90s, I did the full “computer kid” routine: wrote a few clunky apps, bought a domain name, packaged my software, and uploaded it to shareware sites. I even made one sale. (Never cashed the check, but the buyer did get their unlock code.) I collaborated with other indie devs, integrated tools, and picked up some IT consulting gigs.
But like many “computer kids,” I spent more time fixing computers than writing software. By the early 2000s, programming had taken a backseat to server management and hardware troubleshooting. Aside from some scripting in PHP (Most of which is actually still in production, 15 years later!), I wasn’t doing a lot of programming.
🤖 2011–2016: The Android Interlude
In 2011, I got back into development via Android. I built a calorie database app for restaurant foods and released it on the Play Store. It eventually saw 400–500k downloads.
Oddly enough, as of this writing, it’s still installed on 397 devices—and someone even redistributed the APK with their name on it, despite it still having my bundle ID: com.jonwestfall.ffcal.
Then another long pause from 2016 until now.
📱 2025: Wandrip and the Wonders of Modern Dev
Fast forward to today: I’m deep in development on Wandrip. And I’m absolutely floored by how much easier—and faster—everything is.
Let’s walk through a simple example: fixing a bug.
Back in 1997, if I found a bug in one of my programs, the process looked like this:
- Boot up my Windows 95 machine (which I had likely just reformatted… again).
- Reinstall my development tools (Delphi, utilities, installer creators).
- Hunt down my source code (version control? What’s that?).
- Try to remember what my uncommented spaghetti code even did.
- Fix the bug, compile (if I could), and generate a new installer using InstallShield.
- Upload the new
setup.exeto my web host. Submit to Download.com. - Wait and hope people downloaded the new version (and that they didn’t just stick with the buggy one).
And if I had any questions? I’d consult my books or maybe a newsgroup post from six months earlier. Google didn’t exist. StackOverflow wasn’t even a dream.
Now compare that to today:
- I log into a GitHub Codespace. It automatically pulls my code.
- I fix the bug—often with help from an AI assistant.
- I test it directly in the browser, commit the changes, and launch a build using Expo Application Services (EAS).
- EAS can compile Android and iOS apps on its servers, help with distribution, and even push updates to app stores.
All of this can take under an hour. On an iPad.
It’s been nearly 30 years since I started programming, and I still find joy in it. If anything, I find it more joyful today—because I spend more time creating and less time fighting my tools.
Sure, I may be a dinosaur. But the code still runs.