A short conversational excerpt from a YouTube video (May 19, 2025) featuring Dennis H. Lewis discussing the importance of continual learning and adaptability in software development. He recalls his first development job on a Kaypro II (two floppies, no hard drive, 64K RAM, CP/M), contrasts past constraints with modern tools (Bubble, AI, Web3, smartphones), and emphasizes that understanding customers and building businesses remains more important than any specific tool.
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I think that people that are listening and watching today's episode are going to get something really valuable out of you. And this is actually something that I'm trying to really learn from you. It's a really valuable skill that I've seen you master, you know, across your entire life, which is to never stop learning. Being able to adapt.
Yeah.
To things that are.
To evolution, man. I mean, if you don't adapt, you die.
I mean, I'm not. I don't want to be rude here, but you're, you know, you're on. On the older side.
Just to give people an idea, I. My first development job of building a software application was with a Kaypro 2 computer. It was this huge suitcase like device. It had two floppy disks. Okay. That means it had no hard drive. It had 64k of RAM. And I got hired to build an accounting program with this system. And. And I did. That was the first.
How was the building experience?
Well, there was no database, so we stored data in files that we had to. That I had to sort myself. And I would keep the program in one floppy disk and the data in the other so that you could kind of keep things organized. This was with cpm. It was before dos.
It all sounds Chinese to me.
It does. But the truth is, the lesson there is that it was. I was still doing the same thing. I was solving a problem for a business and getting paid for it.
And are you enjoying today's way of building better?
Of course. I mean, tools change. But I think that the underlying understanding of what you're doing and how you have to adapt and solve real problems, that doesn't lose its value. It doesn't lose its.
Place. So, sure, now we use Bubble. Now we use AI. Now we use Web3. Now we use all sorts of really sophisticated things we can have in our. You know, an iPhone can do, you know, a gazillion things more than that, you know, Kaypro computer could do at the time. But the value that we bring is the value of not only being able to develop a software, but it's to develop a business, and it's to understand the business needs of our customers and get them where they want to be. And I think that that is kind of irrelevant to the tools, but you obviously have to keep up to date.
