3 ms·

was 1996 really that different than today? because reliable is the last word i would use to describe software today.

• ashleyn 8y ago
  The internet wasn't as big and software frequently shipped as a boxed product on a disk, cartridge, or CD-ROM. You had one shot to get it right without major bugs because fixing them required another run of physical media.
• passwd 8y ago
  It surely is different. We at least managed to contain some of the issues in normal operation. Back in the day, crashing whole OS in BSOD/panic style was more common, drivers unstable, things written in not-so-safe languages more popular. So ultimately it depends what do you mean by reliable - by itself, functionality might not be so much better, but yes, sometimes you don't mind as much as you would do back then.
• patrickg_zill 8y ago
  There was more Pascal and more assembly language. Some believe that Macintosh suffered a lot of instability from the switch to C from Pascal. I don't have any source code to point to however, only anecdote.
• 2sk21 8y ago
  Even in the late 90s, source code revision control was a dark art: either you used extremely expensive proprietary systems or else you used CVS which was very low level and completely lacked integration with any bug tracking system. Merging in a big feature in CVS was a nerve-racking experience.