Abstract :
The infamous prediction "I think there is a world market for maybe five computers," was allegedly made by Thomas Watson, Sr. Perhaps he was merely a little ahead of his time, if he was referring to farms of computers accessed over networks, i.e., "computers in the clouds." Mainframes once dominated the computing landscape, drawing programmers from afar to submit their applications, along with burnt offerings (especially if bugs got into the vacuum tubes). The old order changed, however, and mainframes gave way to a myriad diaspora that took computing power to programmers\´ desktops.