4 ms·
Some of us are old enough to remember when the midwest (or more precisely, the Twin Cities area) was the nation's center for high-performance computing business
by pklausler 10y ago
Some of us are old enough to remember when the midwest (or more precisely, the Twin Cities area) was the nation's center for high-performance computing businesses. ERA, Univac, Honeywell, Control Data, Cray Research, ETA -- there was something in the water up there that laid a lot of groundwork for modern computing but is mostly now all forgotten.
- hga 10y agoA lot of good stuff also came out of IBM Rochester (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Rochester https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Rochester), Minnesota. ADDED: They were tapped to develop what was going to be to the System/360 what it was to prior systems, that got canceled for the obvious reasons, and various of those things ended up in what's now their IBM i (formerly best known as the AS/400), which under the hood is light-years beyond UNIX(TM) and its progeny.
- poulsbohemian 10y agoAny Luther College grads here? Once upon a time there were quite a few of us at IBM Rochester.
- tdb7893 10y agoShoutout to the twin cities! As a developer here (without kids and living pretty cheap) I'm saving half of my income each month. I have a 1000sq ft apartment for 1k a month
- amyjess 10y agoI have to admit that St. Paul is on my short list for places to move in case I ever have to leave my home state (which might actually happen next year, thanks to Texas's transphobic state legislature). How's the food there?
- mitchty 10y agoIts fine, we've even got a kurdish restaurant. http://www.babanis.com http://www.babanis.com I live in downtown (lower town) st paul, its starting to gentrify as a note though. But thats only if you want to live in the city itself.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- jseliger 10y agoThe big problem many other places face (or face? I don't know the state of the art) is California has prohibited non-competes for decades: http://www.vox.com/2016/4/12/11349248/noncompetes-silicon-valley-route-128 http://www.vox.com/2016/4/12/11349248/noncompetes-silicon-va.... If you want to be the next SV (or better), killing non-competes at the state level is a good place to start.
- ghaff 10y agoI'm no fan of non-competes but, as that article even notes, there are counterarguments that largely outlawing non-competes has been the secret sauce for Silicon Valley. For example, there's the observation (see also Levy's Hackers) that a lot of computing industry action shifted from Route 128 to the West Coast. But consider the following: * Many of those Route 128 companies were started by people jumping from other minicomputer companies. e.g. Data General was started by Edson deCastro who came from DEC. * I'm not sure how common non-competes were at any of those companies. I certainly was never presented with one. It's true that people had longer careers with a given company but it wasn't necessarily because of non-competes. * AFAIK, California law around non-competes existed long before the semiconductor boom effectively created Silicon Valley. (It's at least traced to 19th century California business code law.) * The PC/industry-standard computer cycle was only somewhat related to the Bay area. Intel yes and HP to a lesser degree. But Compaq and Dell were in Texas. Microsoft was in Washington. IBM was in Boca and later Raleigh. Again, I'm all for weakening non-competes. I could name a couple of companies that IMO use them egregiously. But I do think it's difficult to frame Silicon Valley success as a direct result of California law in that area.
- x2398dh1 10y ago>> something in the water Is that a 3M / isopropyl ether joke?