The iPhone 3G was introduced in July 2008 along with the App Store, and official support for 3rd party apps. I was lucky enough to get a job programming an app for it a couple months later. It was rough at first, with so much undocumented behavior, no playbook of best practices and very little help to find on the web. But it also taught me a lot of self-reliance. I didn't get to be part of the gold rushes in the 80's and 90's when personal computers and the web exploded onto the scene, so I feel grateful to have been part of another "new world" in tech, full of uncertainty, opportunity and excitement.

It still blows my mind that it's already been 14 years - smartphones still feel like "the new thing" to me - maybe just because no huge new platforms have emerged since then to take the "new thing" crown?