The other day I was looking at a website of a contracting company that specializes in mobile development. The site said that they were pioneers in the field. The site then had as its next line that the company was started in 2009. I normally think of pioneers as people who initially settle an area or who are first in a particular field. Unless my history of mobile is a little off, 2009 is a bit late to the party. If we just consider the “modern” era of mobile development that began with the iPhone and Android, they are still late as the iPhone was released in 2007 and the SDK in 2008.
However, saying that mobile development began in 2007/2008 is doing a disservice to all the predecessors to iOS. PalmOS came out in 1996, the Newton came out in 1993, Windows CE came out in 1996 and the Psion was about the same time.
I have no idea what meaning of pioneer this company had in mind, but they are certainly not pioneers in mobile applications. I’ve been writing mobile applications since 1994 when I first got a Newton (the Apple Personal Interactive Electronics group which made the Newton licensed my NotifyMail program and sent me a Newton MessagePad 110 in exchange for the license) and I don’t consider myself a pioneer. I know a number of people that wrote mobile applications prior to this.
If the company considers themselves pioneers, what do they call their developers that have 1-2 years of experience? Experts?
No doubt the engineers of that company weren’t born when Newton came out 😉