3 ms·

I feel this is taking extremely rose-tinted view of past. I don't think software was ever particularly reliable.

by zokier 5y ago

codebolt 5y ago
Yeah, that was exactly what I was thinking. Getting PC games to run in the 90s was an engineering discipline in and of itself.
- GlennS 5y ago
  Oh yes! I had forgotten the tiresome collection of labelled boot disks, and the trial and error to create a combination which would work for a particular game. Do I skipping loading the CD-ROM drivers for this one, or the sound card drivers? Do I want extended memory or expanded memory or both or neither?
- flohofwoe 5y ago
  That's because the PC platform was always a broken mess (and one of my pet theories is that this "mindset" of a broken platform has leaked into the software developed for PCs). Running games on any non-PC machine (like the Amiga or Atari ST) generally didn't require any tinkering. Of course this "broken mess" also led to a higher level of innovation in the PC world which eventually left the Amigas and Ataris behind, basically the original "move fast and break things" platform ;)
DaiPlusPlus 5y ago
> I don't think software was ever particularly reliable Agreed - but software was also markedly less user-hostile and performance-wasteful: though that was due to limitations of the time: e.g. you can't spy on users or require phone-home DRM without a good internet connection (not that DRM dongles were much better). If there's one good thing that might come from the trend towards computers locking users out of kernel-mode it's that games and media systems will stop being able to install their own rootkits.
- RantyDave 5y ago
  DRM dongles were horrible bastards. I remember working with an expensive piece of audio post production software that held it's license and the license for all the plugins on this stupendously delicate USB thing. People plugged them into the front of their Macs and snapped them off so often.
  - DaiPlusPlus 5y ago
    > People plugged them into the front of their Macs and snapped them off so often. I winced
RantyDave 5y ago
Some of it was. My first three computers never crashed at all. But then hard drives were invented, and suddenly computers could hold several orders of magnitude more mistakes. Demands on feature set grew. We started expecting to run more than one program at once and have them play nice with each other. Then we connected them to the Internet and a whole new world of mistakes became possible - and this is where we are. But stuff like ... Borland TurboPascal. Was rock solid and fast.
- native_samples 5y ago
  Eh. Turbo Pascal was great but I recall the Delphi era definitely having a tick/tock cadence to reliability. Delphi 2 was solid. Delphi 3 crashed a lot. Delphi 4 was better but still didn't reach Delphi 2 levels of reliability. IIRC 5 was a hot mess. That's about the time I stopped using it.

I feel this is taking extremely rose-tinted view of past. I don't think software was ever particularly reliable.

by zokier 5y ago

I feel this is taking extremely rose-tinted view of past. I don't think software was ever particularly reliable.

Yeah, that was exactly what I was thinking. Getting PC games to run in the 90s was an engineering discipline in and of itself.

GlennS 5y ago
Oh yes! I had forgotten the tiresome collection of labelled boot disks, and the trial and error to create a combination which would work for a particular game. Do I skipping loading the CD-ROM drivers for this one, or the sound card drivers? Do I want extended memory or expanded memory or both or neither?
flohofwoe 5y ago
That's because the PC platform was always a broken mess (and one of my pet theories is that this "mindset" of a broken platform has leaked into the software developed for PCs). Running games on any non-PC machine (like the Amiga or Atari ST) generally didn't require any tinkering. Of course this "broken mess" also led to a higher level of innovation in the PC world which eventually left the Amigas and Ataris behind, basically the original "move fast and break things" platform ;)

DaiPlusPlus 5y ago

> I don't think software was ever particularly reliable Agreed - but software was also markedly less user-hostile and performance-wasteful: though that was due to limitations of the time: e.g. you can't spy on users or require phone-home DRM without a good internet connection (not that DRM dongles were much better). If there's one good thing that might come from the trend towards computers locking users out of kernel-mode it's that games and media systems will stop being able to install their own rootkits.

RantyDave 5y ago
DRM dongles were horrible bastards. I remember working with an expensive piece of audio post production software that held it's license and the license for all the plugins on this stupendously delicate USB thing. People plugged them into the front of their Macs and snapped them off so often.
- DaiPlusPlus 5y ago
  > People plugged them into the front of their Macs and snapped them off so often. I winced

RantyDave 5y ago

Some of it was. My first three computers never crashed at all. But then hard drives were invented, and suddenly computers could hold several orders of magnitude more mistakes. Demands on feature set grew. We started expecting to run more than one program at once and have them play nice with each other. Then we connected them to the Internet and a whole new world of mistakes became possible - and this is where we are. But stuff like ... Borland TurboPascal. Was rock solid and fast.

native_samples 5y ago
Eh. Turbo Pascal was great but I recall the Delphi era definitely having a tick/tock cadence to reliability. Delphi 2 was solid. Delphi 3 crashed a lot. Delphi 4 was better but still didn't reach Delphi 2 levels of reliability. IIRC 5 was a hot mess. That's about the time I stopped using it.