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I don't understand the fascination with obsolete commodity hardware on HN. What would be fascinating would be if modern software could run as fast as 1980s/199

I don't understand the fascination with obsolete commodity hardware on HN. What would be fascinating would be if modern software could run as fast as 1980s/1990s software with the same functionality...!

kazinator 3y ago
I was trying to find a way to copy the ruler in Libre Office Writer the other day, and had a flashback to how easy it was in 1990 in ClarisWorks on a Mac.
sgt 3y ago
It kinda does now. Just buy a M1/M2 Mac and you will see :-)
wslh 3y ago
> I don't understand the fascination with obsolete commodity hardware on HN. Older hardware had (obviously?) more restrictions and less to no documentation to current one. That ignited creative and search activities that are lower or non-existant now. For example, now GPUs are more or less blackboxes while before you should study some basic linear algebra to modify and display objects in 3D.
- anthk 3y ago
  >basic linear algebra So, like before, then?
- bluescrn 3y ago
  Before GPUs, you'd first have to master assembly language optimisation if you wanted to do anything worthwhile with realtime 3D. (But for some people, that was a whole lot more fun than building games in Unity or Unreal Engine...)
bdcravens 3y ago
A significant portion of HN readers used that hardware at some point. Far more relevant than San Francisco socioeconomics.
BirAdam 3y ago
Old stuff is usually simple enough to be fully understood by a single person. This is very much not true of any modern hardware. As a result, many people passionate about computing machinery like to learn about and study old hardware. This is especially true of the 8 bit era, but much 16 bit stuff straddled the 8 bit line and simplicity.
- briHass 3y ago
  It's always shocking to me that in my lifetime (programming on a VIC-20 as a kid), computers have gone from something that you could understand at all levels to a deep pile of abstractions that no one can honestly claim to understand without a lot of handwaving. I think we also marvel at how much the early programmers/hardware guys were able to do with such limited resources. Useful applications could be written that take kilobytes of RAM, and the optimizations to get there are reasonably easy to understand.
  - BirAdam 3y ago
    Well, when the hardware is simpler the OS environment is (usually) simpler, and the application software will likewise end up simpler. There is no reason that one couldn't write something like VisiCalc in AMD64 ASM, and I am sure that someone somewhere has done so. The main problem is that no one today would care to use that application. We've come to want and expect far more. As a result, software is a fluid that will always expand to fill its container.
bayindirh 3y ago
> What would be fascinating would be if modern software could run as fast as 1980s/1990s software with the same functionality...! Interestingly enough, when you advocate, or even worse, try that, the efforts are shunned with "no business value" & "hardware is cheap, anyway" label. However, working with snappy software makes life more livable and enjoyable.
rjsw 3y ago
I'm running pretty much the same software that I was using in 1987, it is a lot faster now though. The only real difference is that emacs is using a TrueType font.
FartyMcFarter 3y ago
> I don't understand the fascination with obsolete commodity hardware on HN. It's pretty simple - on the emotional side there's nostalgia, and on the rational side there's the fact that old hardware is typically much easier to understand. A modern CPU has so much technology that there's probably no person in the world who can understand all of it: cache coherency, out-of-order execution, branch prediction, TSX instructions, the list goes on. In contrast, a dedicated person could feasibly understand all the logic in an old CPU and keep a good mental model of how all of it works.
- npongratz 3y ago
  > old hardware is typically much easier to understand. The old hardware is also more trustworthy -- perhaps as a corollary to said easier comprehensibility, or simply thanks to unwitting limitations-as-a-feature. There weren't computers all the way down, each with its own bugs, security issues, modes of surveillance/exfiltration, and ability to poke memory with impunity.
jowdones 3y ago
Nostalgia of having lived a unique period in human history when computer capabilities were evolving by leaps and bounds by the year. Nothing is even close to that nowadays. Like, I brought my first 386 SX-25 Mhz home from college campus when vacation arrived and so replaced the ZX-Spectrum that my younger brother was using. Arrived home late in the evening, my brother was nearly delirious with excitement but didn't have much time to play with the PC coze parents demanded he goes to sleep, afterwards what big deal, there's plenty of time to do whatever in the morning (parents sensitivity never changes). He told me he barely closed an eye that entire night, checking the clock every half hour waiting for the dawn. When I woke up it was day outside and my brother was typing on the PC keyboard. Today (almost 30 years later) he tells me nothing in the World can replicate that experience. You could offer him the most preposterous Windows gaming machine or ridiculously expensive Mac, he'd check it for like 5 minutes, say "nice" then shrug and go to sleep :)
- peterisza 3y ago
  Today, AI is where a similar experience can be found
  - jowdones 3y ago
    ROFL. Good one.

kazinator 3y ago

I was trying to find a way to copy the ruler in Libre Office Writer the other day, and had a flashback to how easy it was in 1990 in ClarisWorks on a Mac.

sgt 3y ago

It kinda does now. Just buy a M1/M2 Mac and you will see :-)

wslh 3y ago

> I don't understand the fascination with obsolete commodity hardware on HN. Older hardware had (obviously?) more restrictions and less to no documentation to current one. That ignited creative and search activities that are lower or non-existant now. For example, now GPUs are more or less blackboxes while before you should study some basic linear algebra to modify and display objects in 3D.

anthk 3y ago
>basic linear algebra So, like before, then?
bluescrn 3y ago
Before GPUs, you'd first have to master assembly language optimisation if you wanted to do anything worthwhile with realtime 3D. (But for some people, that was a whole lot more fun than building games in Unity or Unreal Engine...)

bdcravens 3y ago

A significant portion of HN readers used that hardware at some point. Far more relevant than San Francisco socioeconomics.

BirAdam 3y ago

Old stuff is usually simple enough to be fully understood by a single person. This is very much not true of any modern hardware. As a result, many people passionate about computing machinery like to learn about and study old hardware. This is especially true of the 8 bit era, but much 16 bit stuff straddled the 8 bit line and simplicity.

briHass 3y ago
It's always shocking to me that in my lifetime (programming on a VIC-20 as a kid), computers have gone from something that you could understand at all levels to a deep pile of abstractions that no one can honestly claim to understand without a lot of handwaving. I think we also marvel at how much the early programmers/hardware guys were able to do with such limited resources. Useful applications could be written that take kilobytes of RAM, and the optimizations to get there are reasonably easy to understand.
- BirAdam 3y ago
  Well, when the hardware is simpler the OS environment is (usually) simpler, and the application software will likewise end up simpler. There is no reason that one couldn't write something like VisiCalc in AMD64 ASM, and I am sure that someone somewhere has done so. The main problem is that no one today would care to use that application. We've come to want and expect far more. As a result, software is a fluid that will always expand to fill its container.

bayindirh 3y ago

> What would be fascinating would be if modern software could run as fast as 1980s/1990s software with the same functionality...! Interestingly enough, when you advocate, or even worse, try that, the efforts are shunned with "no business value" & "hardware is cheap, anyway" label. However, working with snappy software makes life more livable and enjoyable.

rjsw 3y ago

I'm running pretty much the same software that I was using in 1987, it is a lot faster now though. The only real difference is that emacs is using a TrueType font.

FartyMcFarter 3y ago

> I don't understand the fascination with obsolete commodity hardware on HN. It's pretty simple - on the emotional side there's nostalgia, and on the rational side there's the fact that old hardware is typically much easier to understand. A modern CPU has so much technology that there's probably no person in the world who can understand all of it: cache coherency, out-of-order execution, branch prediction, TSX instructions, the list goes on. In contrast, a dedicated person could feasibly understand all the logic in an old CPU and keep a good mental model of how all of it works.

npongratz 3y ago
> old hardware is typically much easier to understand. The old hardware is also more trustworthy -- perhaps as a corollary to said easier comprehensibility, or simply thanks to unwitting limitations-as-a-feature. There weren't computers all the way down, each with its own bugs, security issues, modes of surveillance/exfiltration, and ability to poke memory with impunity.

jowdones 3y ago

Nostalgia of having lived a unique period in human history when computer capabilities were evolving by leaps and bounds by the year. Nothing is even close to that nowadays. Like, I brought my first 386 SX-25 Mhz home from college campus when vacation arrived and so replaced the ZX-Spectrum that my younger brother was using. Arrived home late in the evening, my brother was nearly delirious with excitement but didn't have much time to play with the PC coze parents demanded he goes to sleep, afterwards what big deal, there's plenty of time to do whatever in the morning (parents sensitivity never changes). He told me he barely closed an eye that entire night, checking the clock every half hour waiting for the dawn. When I woke up it was day outside and my brother was typing on the PC keyboard. Today (almost 30 years later) he tells me nothing in the World can replicate that experience. You could offer him the most preposterous Windows gaming machine or ridiculously expensive Mac, he'd check it for like 5 minutes, say "nice" then shrug and go to sleep :)

peterisza 3y ago
Today, AI is where a similar experience can be found
- jowdones 3y ago
  ROFL. Good one.