4 ms·

This is parenthetical to the discussion, but reading this article made me deeply nostalgic for 15 years ago, when we still had Freshmeat and Slashdot was decent

This is parenthetical to the discussion, but reading this article made me deeply nostalgic for 15 years ago, when we still had Freshmeat and Slashdot was decent and Mozilla was fresh and the web was largely full of information, not javascript. Back on topic, I wrote this back in 2006: "What's old is new again, the quest for distraction-free writing" (http://therandymon.com/index.php?/archives/181-Whats-Old-is-New-Again-the-Quest-for-Distraction-Free-Writing.html http://therandymon.com/index.php?/archives/181-Whats-Old-is-...). The topic remains relevant, and maybe more relevant than ever. It's super hard to arrange time and materials and commitments so that you can concentrate deeply on the task before you. We are perhaps not making much progress.

djsumdog 10y ago
Freshmeat turned into Freecode and it's still there, but locked in perpetual read-only nostalgia mode from 2013. It is quite literally frozen in time.
milesrout 10y ago
I remember reading your article several years ago (2010ish maybe?) and thinking it was bloody fantastic.
erickhill 10y ago
I went down a very similar track last year with my own exploration in "How to Use Classic Amiga for Word Processing Today". I took a nostalgic trip inspired by George R. Martin, who still uses WordStar to write Game of Thrones. I did it for much of the same reasons you wrote your post - a desire for a distraction-free environment without a gazillion features to get a relatively basic task done. Thanks for sharing your post.
Yetanfou 10y ago
Back then there was Freshmeat, now there is Github (et al). In that respect I think things actually improved, especially given the ease with which git allows others to fork repositories, safeguarding against site disappearance. Given the distributed nature of git even the eventual disappearance - or total sellout - of Github (et al) will not diminish this as those who want can host their own repositories in a few minutes using the likes of Gogs/Gitea or Gitlab. Slashdot was fun while it lasted, there have been several attempts at a restart of similar communities (Soylent News etc.) but as far as I know none have managed to create the same 'feel of community'. Maybe that is because there is no real community? Anyway, with more and more people getting access to true broadband the possibilities of decentralised hosting only increase so I still have some hopes for the future when it comes to building something interesting outside of the walled-and-fenced big-data farms so popular nowadays.
_pmf_ 10y ago
> and the web was largely full of information, not javascript. Well, Flash was there to ruin the party.
wcummings 10y ago
I feel you, I grew up on this stuff. I might have read this as a kid in 2002. I ran ratpoison back in the day (on Slackware, another blast from the past), I still routinely quote the "inspiration" [1], "SCWM, Pot and the GPL": >all the real elite programmers are wobblies. Hopefully the ugly self-hosted sites hosting bespoke evilwm patches, and troll posts about SCWM will be preserved for posterity. I'd hate to think young programmers are missing out on our rich heritage. [1] http://www.nongnu.org/ratpoison/inspiration.html http://www.nongnu.org/ratpoison/inspiration.html

djsumdog 10y ago

Freshmeat turned into Freecode and it's still there, but locked in perpetual read-only nostalgia mode from 2013. It is quite literally frozen in time.

milesrout 10y ago

I remember reading your article several years ago (2010ish maybe?) and thinking it was bloody fantastic.

erickhill 10y ago

I went down a very similar track last year with my own exploration in "How to Use Classic Amiga for Word Processing Today". I took a nostalgic trip inspired by George R. Martin, who still uses WordStar to write Game of Thrones. I did it for much of the same reasons you wrote your post - a desire for a distraction-free environment without a gazillion features to get a relatively basic task done. Thanks for sharing your post.

Yetanfou 10y ago

Back then there was Freshmeat, now there is Github (et al). In that respect I think things actually improved, especially given the ease with which git allows others to fork repositories, safeguarding against site disappearance. Given the distributed nature of git even the eventual disappearance - or total sellout - of Github (et al) will not diminish this as those who want can host their own repositories in a few minutes using the likes of Gogs/Gitea or Gitlab. Slashdot was fun while it lasted, there have been several attempts at a restart of similar communities (Soylent News etc.) but as far as I know none have managed to create the same 'feel of community'. Maybe that is because there is no real community? Anyway, with more and more people getting access to true broadband the possibilities of decentralised hosting only increase so I still have some hopes for the future when it comes to building something interesting outside of the walled-and-fenced big-data farms so popular nowadays.

_pmf_ 10y ago

> and the web was largely full of information, not javascript. Well, Flash was there to ruin the party.

wcummings 10y ago

I feel you, I grew up on this stuff. I might have read this as a kid in 2002. I ran ratpoison back in the day (on Slackware, another blast from the past), I still routinely quote the "inspiration" [1], "SCWM, Pot and the GPL": >all the real elite programmers are wobblies. Hopefully the ugly self-hosted sites hosting bespoke evilwm patches, and troll posts about SCWM will be preserved for posterity. I'd hate to think young programmers are missing out on our rich heritage. [1] http://www.nongnu.org/ratpoison/inspiration.html http://www.nongnu.org/ratpoison/inspiration.html