From the 80s I miss the variety of computer systems at the consumer level. Apple ][, C64, Tandy Model 3/4 and the CoCo, OS/9 and more. When it became clear ever

From the 80s I miss the variety of computer systems at the consumer level. Apple ][, C64, Tandy Model 3/4 and the CoCo, OS/9 and more. When it became clear everything would converge to x86, that made me sad. The world is just that much more boring without variety. I miss programming in assembly. Slapping together frameworks with some sample code from Stack Overflow just doesn't provide the same mental satisfaction. I miss interviewing in the 90s. No white board algorithm puzzles or such nonsense. Just a conversation to see if your interests matched the role and you're hired. (I guess I don't miss the low salaries which were on par with any office workers in non-tech fields, nothing like today. But the good side was that everyone was in tech for the sheer love of it, not to make a buck.) But what I truly miss (nostalgia aside) is when Silicon Valley used to be about technology. The big names in Silicon Valley were all actual technology companies: Sun, SGI, HP (the good original HP, not the ink maker). The product was the technology and the culture reflected that. Engineers were in charge and the goal was to make better technology. Today the product is advertising and the goal is just to drive more eyeballs. Engineers have become commoditized and micromanaged (agile) by PMs who are driven by advertising goals. (PMs as we know them today did not exist.) Except for Apple, none of the big names today (FAANG) are tech companies anymore.