Sorry, I forgot that for many engineers this is, in fact, their first time going through a technology cycle like this, and so would need more explanation. I am too young for Visicalc myself, but the cycle that I saw while I was in high school- the dot-com bubble- doesn't have convenient, easy to mark out dates like the PC does.

Thinking... Thinking... Tim Berners-Lee proposing HTTP in 1989 is kinda like the original Attention is All You Need paper, I guess? Netscape 1.0 release in December 1994 is ChatGPT 1.0? And then Amazon.com opened up to the public in July 1995 and then IPO'd in May 1997 (after raising less than 10 million dollars in two funding rounds). But once again we have the business side of these previous cycles moving much faster than this one.

WOW. That does really drive home the perspective. I was an adolescent during those years and it did seem quick then, but that's an insane pace in retrospect.

Amazon is perhaps a counter-example to your point, though, to be fair. It seems to me they did a lot of spaghetti throwing while making accounting losses for a good number of years. Granted, they did it on OpenAI's dining budget.

"It seems to me they did a lot of spaghetti throwing while making accounting losses for a good number of years."

They actually didn't. They knew what they were doing. Bezos had a proper background in Finance, unlike Altman.

Yeah I started programming in 2006 as a kid and then entered professional work in 2016 I guess as still a kid depending on your perspective :P

This is really the first meteoric rise in tech I've seen / am experiencing first hand.

All I will say is make sure to enjoy your knees while they don't hurt, whippersnapper.