5 ms·

So sort of, but let's not look at the past too wistfully. I also remember when moderately long text had to be split across files (even multiple floppies if you

So sort of, but let's not look at the past too wistfully. I also remember when moderately long text had to be split across files (even multiple floppies if you were writing a book). I remember having to choose what languages my OS installation was going to be able to display. Farther back I remember not having the spare cash for the expansion card necessary to have lower case letters and typing in program listings out of books because that's how some software was distributed (Apple II). Our current generation of PCs is probably within a factor of two of the minimum spec necessary for robust machine translation and natural language interfaces. I enjoy using the old hardware but it really doesn't do most of the jobs we have now.

fluoridation 3y ago
In every example you listed the limiting factor is memory or storage size, not computing speed.
- turbobooster 3y ago
  [dead]
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
amluto 3y ago
> I remember having to choose what languages my OS installation was going to be able to display. What changed? Modern Windows still requires language packs, but you can apparently switch your primary language without a reinstall. Adobe products still corrupt already-correct Arabic text unless you have the correct edition or add-on or something. It was indeed annoying to transfer files at least until the Internet and flash drives were widely available, but that’s been more than 20 years.
oliwarner 3y ago
These limits of old hardware are exactly what makes the software so amazing. Look what was achieved despite those limits. We've basically had the same desktop and productivity software for 30 years. Look at games like Doom or Tyrian, or what was happening on consoles and think about how crappy that hardware was. Modern software is embarrassingly slow by comparison. I've been around long enough to know that's always been the way. Newer software drives new hardware sales and we're on yesteryear's supercomputers but why?
- anyfoo 3y ago
  > Look what was achieved despite those limits. We've basically had the same desktop and productivity software for 30 years. Look at games like Doom or Tyrian, or what was happening on consoles and think about how crappy that hardware was. I agree with the rest, but games are a comparatively bad example, almost a counterexample. A lot of them are basically the exception of what you're saying. Because the visual fidelity of games has overall steadily improved since the inception of computer games, with some astonishing milestones along the way. So games are a category of software that did (and continues to do) make efficient use of ever-improving computer hardware. Not all of them, not in every aspect, but the overall progress is obvious. Office software on the other hand...
  - oliwarner 3y ago
    Compared to productivity software, sure, but cycle-for-cycle, the 90s gaming was driven by developers like John Carmack and spiritual forebears who didn't just have to invent their gameplay metaphors, they had to find ways to trick hardware into doing things faster (a lot of mathematical shortcuts, but also working in the terms the hardware worked). Again, I agree that gaming has come further, but I actually think the comparison works well because gaming is reaching that Windows 2k/XP plateau. We're waist-deep into diminishing returns now. Cyberpunk is the Windows Vista of gamedev. Gosh it's pretty at times but at an almighty cost, we're shovelling gold into our PCs to make generic compute modules work out how light interacts with virtual surfaces. Doesn't sound like gaming to me. The software continues to get flabbier, demands more and more, and we have to keep up of we can't load Office in under 10 seconds, or play games at the native resolutions. It just feels wasteful.
    - anyfoo 3y ago
      > Compared to productivity software, sure, but cycle-for-cycle, [...] they had to find ways to trick That's true, but I think the idea was more that other software has not only been mostly stagnant (that, too), but often actually regressing in performance. Games on the other hand have been steadily improving. Maybe not keeping up the full pace, as the mathematical and hardware tricks became unnecessary and were traded in for ease of development, but game developers at least overall did make use of the better hardware. They stopped doing the super clever stuff when it was just not necessary anymore while still providing better fidelity. > Doesn't sound like gaming to me. Eh, it's part of it. And it's not like other aspects did not profit from the better hardware as well. Later Civilization titles are pretty compute-intensive between turns, for more complex gameplay. Earlier chess programs had to "think" a very long time for not that great chess performance...
6510 3y ago
> So sort of, but let's not look at the past too wistfully. why? > I also remember when moderately long text had to be split across files (even multiple floppies if you were writing a book). 2MB is 2 million bytes, The average book is something like 0.5 > I remember having to choose what languages my OS installation was going to be able to display. This is a bad thing? > Farther back I remember not having the spare cash for... lol, irrelevant! > Our current generation of PCs is probably within a factor of two of the minimum spec necessary for robust machine translation and natural language interfaces. I have no idea what you just said. People for the most part read/write text and watch videos. This would work much better if we eliminated compute entirely. > I enjoy using the old hardware but it really doesn't do most of the jobs we have now. imho the way to look at old hardware is to look at only the good features we've lost. For example, I cant think of anything I want from a c64 except from sprite collision and having menu entries starting with function keys [F1] because that worked so insanely fast compared to a mouse. The rest was just coping with the state of the art.
- KerrAvon 3y ago
  The person you're replying to was talking about the Apple II era, when floppies held less than 200k at best. Availability of 2.44 MB floppy drives was an extremely late development, and IIRC rare to actually find in the wild.
  - anyfoo 3y ago
    Extremely rare. I never encountered one, and I had a lot of niche stuff in the 90s. 1.44MB was the effective capacity of floppies until they died out. There was stuff like VGACopy that could format them with higher capacity (since floppy controller access was fairly low level), but it was an uncommon thing among tinkerers, the disks themselves were not marketed for more than 1.44MB, and I doubt they were tested above their nominal capacity (and even at that they were not exactly known as super reliably).
  - lproven 3y ago
    There never was a 2.44MB disk. You're muddling up 1.44MB (which were really 1.4MB) and 2.88MB.
whartung 3y ago
Sure, but to that note, we've been at "enough computer" for a vast array of tasks for a long, long time now. Obviously, things that move boatloads of bits (mostly media) have well benefited from the vast amounts of RAM and incredible bandwidth of modern machines. And, of course, video games, which will always push limits. But outside of that, word processing, data collecting, "printing checks from AP", those peaked a long time ago. And, of course, I appreciate how businesses collect vast amounts of data today (because they can, because storage is free), but core business functions, transaction processing, that's pretty well plateaued as well.
- hedgehog 3y ago
  I don't think this is very true. Let's take word processing for example, with say Word 5.1 on a Quadra 700 as a highish end (probably $10k in today's dollars) setup available in around 1992: In a narrow sense typing US English on a keyboard and being able to print it was fairly well solved. It would feel slow to someone with today's machines but it wasn't that bad. On the other hand if you shared with someone else in the early 90s odds are it was by handing off a floppy disk. Did you remember to include the necessary fonts? Oh wait, does the other end have a new enough version of PostScript installed? Does it all fit on one disk? Most languages in the world either required a different OS install or were fully unsupported. Today all of this stuff is pretty well resolved, but at a cost. Easy sharing and interactive collaboration over network is built on protocols like TLS that would be very slow even on the Quadra. The networks that runs over use an amount of compute that rivals supercomputers of the 90s (for one example just look at channel correction in MIMO radios). The disk footprint of all the fonts, languages, etc, is mitigated by storing them server-side, but this is all usable due to how fast networks are now. Machine translation means you can work across a language divide. Dictation is a win for accessibility and avoiding RSI. All of this is available on a Chromebook or iPad that is more reliable than the Quadra, runs on a battery, and is 50x cheaper. We're not done, just as today spell check and grammar check are widely accepted as table stakes in another ten years features like built-in writing coach, editing, and research assistant features will likely be considered basic requirements with all the hardware needed to support that. And that's just word processing.
dredmorbius 3y ago
FWIW, I ran across the splitting-text-into-files problem on Android using one of the highly-recommended note-taking apps. Discovering Termux and having a large suite of Linux terminal-based tools available resolved that and many, many, many more frustrations.

fluoridation 3y ago

In every example you listed the limiting factor is memory or storage size, not computing speed.

turbobooster 3y ago
[dead]
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

amluto 3y ago

> I remember having to choose what languages my OS installation was going to be able to display. What changed? Modern Windows still requires language packs, but you can apparently switch your primary language without a reinstall. Adobe products still corrupt already-correct Arabic text unless you have the correct edition or add-on or something. It was indeed annoying to transfer files at least until the Internet and flash drives were widely available, but that’s been more than 20 years.

oliwarner 3y ago

These limits of old hardware are exactly what makes the software so amazing. Look what was achieved despite those limits. We've basically had the same desktop and productivity software for 30 years. Look at games like Doom or Tyrian, or what was happening on consoles and think about how crappy that hardware was. Modern software is embarrassingly slow by comparison. I've been around long enough to know that's always been the way. Newer software drives new hardware sales and we're on yesteryear's supercomputers but why?

anyfoo 3y ago
> Look what was achieved despite those limits. We've basically had the same desktop and productivity software for 30 years. Look at games like Doom or Tyrian, or what was happening on consoles and think about how crappy that hardware was. I agree with the rest, but games are a comparatively bad example, almost a counterexample. A lot of them are basically the exception of what you're saying. Because the visual fidelity of games has overall steadily improved since the inception of computer games, with some astonishing milestones along the way. So games are a category of software that did (and continues to do) make efficient use of ever-improving computer hardware. Not all of them, not in every aspect, but the overall progress is obvious. Office software on the other hand...
- oliwarner 3y ago
  Compared to productivity software, sure, but cycle-for-cycle, the 90s gaming was driven by developers like John Carmack and spiritual forebears who didn't just have to invent their gameplay metaphors, they had to find ways to trick hardware into doing things faster (a lot of mathematical shortcuts, but also working in the terms the hardware worked). Again, I agree that gaming has come further, but I actually think the comparison works well because gaming is reaching that Windows 2k/XP plateau. We're waist-deep into diminishing returns now. Cyberpunk is the Windows Vista of gamedev. Gosh it's pretty at times but at an almighty cost, we're shovelling gold into our PCs to make generic compute modules work out how light interacts with virtual surfaces. Doesn't sound like gaming to me. The software continues to get flabbier, demands more and more, and we have to keep up of we can't load Office in under 10 seconds, or play games at the native resolutions. It just feels wasteful.
  - anyfoo 3y ago
    > Compared to productivity software, sure, but cycle-for-cycle, [...] they had to find ways to trick That's true, but I think the idea was more that other software has not only been mostly stagnant (that, too), but often actually regressing in performance. Games on the other hand have been steadily improving. Maybe not keeping up the full pace, as the mathematical and hardware tricks became unnecessary and were traded in for ease of development, but game developers at least overall did make use of the better hardware. They stopped doing the super clever stuff when it was just not necessary anymore while still providing better fidelity. > Doesn't sound like gaming to me. Eh, it's part of it. And it's not like other aspects did not profit from the better hardware as well. Later Civilization titles are pretty compute-intensive between turns, for more complex gameplay. Earlier chess programs had to "think" a very long time for not that great chess performance...

6510 3y ago

> So sort of, but let's not look at the past too wistfully. why? > I also remember when moderately long text had to be split across files (even multiple floppies if you were writing a book). 2MB is 2 million bytes, The average book is something like 0.5 > I remember having to choose what languages my OS installation was going to be able to display. This is a bad thing? > Farther back I remember not having the spare cash for... lol, irrelevant! > Our current generation of PCs is probably within a factor of two of the minimum spec necessary for robust machine translation and natural language interfaces. I have no idea what you just said. People for the most part read/write text and watch videos. This would work much better if we eliminated compute entirely. > I enjoy using the old hardware but it really doesn't do most of the jobs we have now. imho the way to look at old hardware is to look at only the good features we've lost. For example, I cant think of anything I want from a c64 except from sprite collision and having menu entries starting with function keys [F1] because that worked so insanely fast compared to a mouse. The rest was just coping with the state of the art.

KerrAvon 3y ago
The person you're replying to was talking about the Apple II era, when floppies held less than 200k at best. Availability of 2.44 MB floppy drives was an extremely late development, and IIRC rare to actually find in the wild.
- anyfoo 3y ago
  Extremely rare. I never encountered one, and I had a lot of niche stuff in the 90s. 1.44MB was the effective capacity of floppies until they died out. There was stuff like VGACopy that could format them with higher capacity (since floppy controller access was fairly low level), but it was an uncommon thing among tinkerers, the disks themselves were not marketed for more than 1.44MB, and I doubt they were tested above their nominal capacity (and even at that they were not exactly known as super reliably).
- lproven 3y ago
  There never was a 2.44MB disk. You're muddling up 1.44MB (which were really 1.4MB) and 2.88MB.

whartung 3y ago

Sure, but to that note, we've been at "enough computer" for a vast array of tasks for a long, long time now. Obviously, things that move boatloads of bits (mostly media) have well benefited from the vast amounts of RAM and incredible bandwidth of modern machines. And, of course, video games, which will always push limits. But outside of that, word processing, data collecting, "printing checks from AP", those peaked a long time ago. And, of course, I appreciate how businesses collect vast amounts of data today (because they can, because storage is free), but core business functions, transaction processing, that's pretty well plateaued as well.

hedgehog 3y ago
I don't think this is very true. Let's take word processing for example, with say Word 5.1 on a Quadra 700 as a highish end (probably $10k in today's dollars) setup available in around 1992: In a narrow sense typing US English on a keyboard and being able to print it was fairly well solved. It would feel slow to someone with today's machines but it wasn't that bad. On the other hand if you shared with someone else in the early 90s odds are it was by handing off a floppy disk. Did you remember to include the necessary fonts? Oh wait, does the other end have a new enough version of PostScript installed? Does it all fit on one disk? Most languages in the world either required a different OS install or were fully unsupported. Today all of this stuff is pretty well resolved, but at a cost. Easy sharing and interactive collaboration over network is built on protocols like TLS that would be very slow even on the Quadra. The networks that runs over use an amount of compute that rivals supercomputers of the 90s (for one example just look at channel correction in MIMO radios). The disk footprint of all the fonts, languages, etc, is mitigated by storing them server-side, but this is all usable due to how fast networks are now. Machine translation means you can work across a language divide. Dictation is a win for accessibility and avoiding RSI. All of this is available on a Chromebook or iPad that is more reliable than the Quadra, runs on a battery, and is 50x cheaper. We're not done, just as today spell check and grammar check are widely accepted as table stakes in another ten years features like built-in writing coach, editing, and research assistant features will likely be considered basic requirements with all the hardware needed to support that. And that's just word processing.

dredmorbius 3y ago

FWIW, I ran across the splitting-text-into-files problem on Android using one of the highly-recommended note-taking apps. Discovering Termux and having a large suite of Linux terminal-based tools available resolved that and many, many, many more frustrations.