With a few very notable exceptions, most of these people are not my peers, and it is highly unlikely that they will ever manage to become my peers. People here

With a few very notable exceptions, most of these people are not my peers, and it is highly unlikely that they will ever manage to become my peers. People here who are my peers are not idiots, so my original statement did not and does not apply to them. The question in general is, what is one doing on a web site which is supposed to be creme de la creme of Silicon Valley and having to ask why Sun Microsystems was so much better? My peer would be driven by relentless pursuit of perfection, being the best they can be at whatever they attempt: that would include researching what came before, and why it was so important when so many people say that it was important. A large portion of people working at Sun Microsystems consisted of highly and formally educated scientists and engineers, inventors in an environment which not only encouraged but inspired innovation. They had people who were capable of designing advanced hardware and people who were capable of designing advanced software, combining both into vertically integrated systems. For example: did you know that Sun UltraSPARC hardware has a crossbar switch at the core of its architecture? PC bucket turd servers still don't have that, relying instead of North and South "bridges", which are not much more than memory controllers, and certainly nowhere near a crossbar switch in design or capability. And that is just one of many, many examples of what made Sun Microsystems so great.