> You mean the time when programming was done with plug boards?
Yes :-), my point was that we had this sort of open architecture for decades through the ability to run any program we like in our computers and these programs being able to use any file they want. Of course they need to know the files' internal structure (at least for almost all binary files and many text files), but this is a protocol issue - the files enable the creation of interfaces but what those interfaces look like is up to the programs. FWIW over the years, people move towards common formats - both binary and text based - that allow different programs to work together (from plain text files, to rich text, HTML, images like PNG and JPG, to Postscript and PDF).
Yes :-), my point was that we had this sort of open architecture for decades through the ability to run any program we like in our computers and these programs being able to use any file they want. Of course they need to know the files' internal structure (at least for almost all binary files and many text files), but this is a protocol issue - the files enable the creation of interfaces but what those interfaces look like is up to the programs. FWIW over the years, people move towards common formats - both binary and text based - that allow different programs to work together (from plain text files, to rich text, HTML, images like PNG and JPG, to Postscript and PDF).