5 ms·

Fantastic show, highly recommend.

by st3ve445678 2y ago

assimpleaspossi 2y ago
Absolutely horrible show and I advise people to not waste their time.
- LaundroMat 2y ago
  Why is that?
  - assimpleaspossi 2y ago
    The acting is horrible. The writing is terrible. The story veers off into areas unrelated. There is a moment of a thoroughly unrelated homosexual encounter. (What was the point of that?!) Moments I know that are so really stretched too far to be believable. And on and on. So bad I couldn't finish the series.
    - radicaldreamer 2y ago
      Sorry you have bad taste and don’t understand character development outside of in your face plot points ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
    - AlbertCory 2y ago
      "The writing is terrible" and what fiction have you ever written? I lived through that era, too. As historical fiction, HACF is pretty decent. "areas unrelated" -- hello, it's FICTION about a specific era, and, without knowing what specifically you're talking about: maybe those "unrelated" areas are period-setting, or character-developing. HACF not for you. Let's leave it at that. You can't please everyone.
    - folsom 2y ago
      I think the homosexual encounter is to show how joe and folks like joe use sex as a tool to exert power over other people.
      - deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
  - mrguyorama 2y ago
    It's extremely contrived and deus-ex-machina all the way through. The "history" the show goes over is crammed into it's Drama first story. The history is there for nostalgia bait, not to celebrate the history or educate. That's why pretty much everything interesting that happened in computing was mangled into coming from the same like 5 people. And the characters are all just narcissistic assholes who are self destructive because it means the show gets to carry on for another season. It also has the cliche density to feel like a high schooler's homework project. If you find yourself addicted to reality TV drama, you will enjoy it. Imagine if you tried to take "It's always sunny in Philadelphia" seriously, and also were watching it because you cared about Philadelphia history. I felt actively patronized the whole time.
    - AlbertCory 2y ago
      Wrong. That's like saying the Patrick O'Brian Aubrey/Maturin novels are "contrived." Hello, it's fiction. It isn't there to educate, except insofar as the situations the characters find themselves in teach you something about what it was like back then. Season 2, though, I couldn't watch.
    - calmworm 2y ago
      Completely inaccurate analogy using IASIP and Philly. lol.
    - jhbadger 2y ago
      I was annoyed by the C64's that were shown as having "C:>" prompts as if they were MS-DOS machines. I think I get where that was coming from -- people who were too young to remember the period were designing the sets and vaguely remembered that "old-timey" computers had "C:>" prompts and given that C64's are old computers, assumed they did too.
- ghaff 2y ago
  Such insightful commentary! I didn't find it a perfect show--especially latterly--but it captured a lot of the era, such as COMDEX, pretty well.
  - assimpleaspossi 2y ago
    As insightful as the comment I replied to.
    - indigodaddy 2y ago
      Precisely
- trollerator23 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - AlbertCory 2y ago
    No, you're wrong. I was there. It was mostly guys, but there were plenty of women as well. Radia Perlman, to name just one famous one. I recall another from Lawrence Livermore whom I met at an IETF. I went to grad school with several of them. There certainly is a lot of woke revisionist BS around. No doubt about that. Edit: in my current book "This New Internet Thing" one of the characters, Cassie, wants to adopt a child as a single woman. I got advice on that process by Heidi Buelow (RIP), who was last at Oracle but worked on the Xerox Star, and adopted two children of her own (Cassie is not modeled on Heidi, except for that). Heidi unfortunately died while I was writing it, and I can't find any online obituary on her. Since we're talking about "back in the day" naturally some of those people have crossed the Great Divide. You can find a few women in here as well: https://decconnection.org/memorials.htm https://decconnection.org/memorials.htm Not a lot, of course. But not none.
  - neilv 2y ago
    > The fact that one of the main characters is a "cool" girl at a time where all the characters were a bunch of nerdy guys From what I recall seeing as a kid, and when working in my teens, that wasn't too unlikely. There were a lot of women in computing, of various pre-Yahoo-IPO eras. I think the relative numbers diminished dramatically with the dotcom gold rush, and the newer bro cultures, and gatekeeping. Only in recent years have we started seeing more women in "tech" again.
  - pjmorris 2y ago
    I'll add Judy Estrin to the list of cool girls from the time, in addition to the non-famous ones I worked with. Her little company stomped our big company at making X terminals back in the 80's. We were probably 70:30 M/F among our ~two dozen new grads.
  - trollerator23 2y ago
    You guys have in fact proven my point by bringing up all two of them.
ErneX 2y ago
I agree.

Fantastic show, highly recommend.

assimpleaspossi 2y ago

Absolutely horrible show and I advise people to not waste their time.

LaundroMat 2y ago
Why is that?
- assimpleaspossi 2y ago
  The acting is horrible. The writing is terrible. The story veers off into areas unrelated. There is a moment of a thoroughly unrelated homosexual encounter. (What was the point of that?!) Moments I know that are so really stretched too far to be believable. And on and on. So bad I couldn't finish the series.
  - radicaldreamer 2y ago
    Sorry you have bad taste and don’t understand character development outside of in your face plot points ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
  - AlbertCory 2y ago
    "The writing is terrible" and what fiction have you ever written? I lived through that era, too. As historical fiction, HACF is pretty decent. "areas unrelated" -- hello, it's FICTION about a specific era, and, without knowing what specifically you're talking about: maybe those "unrelated" areas are period-setting, or character-developing. HACF not for you. Let's leave it at that. You can't please everyone.
  - folsom 2y ago
    I think the homosexual encounter is to show how joe and folks like joe use sex as a tool to exert power over other people.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
- mrguyorama 2y ago
  It's extremely contrived and deus-ex-machina all the way through. The "history" the show goes over is crammed into it's Drama first story. The history is there for nostalgia bait, not to celebrate the history or educate. That's why pretty much everything interesting that happened in computing was mangled into coming from the same like 5 people. And the characters are all just narcissistic assholes who are self destructive because it means the show gets to carry on for another season. It also has the cliche density to feel like a high schooler's homework project. If you find yourself addicted to reality TV drama, you will enjoy it. Imagine if you tried to take "It's always sunny in Philadelphia" seriously, and also were watching it because you cared about Philadelphia history. I felt actively patronized the whole time.
  - AlbertCory 2y ago
    Wrong. That's like saying the Patrick O'Brian Aubrey/Maturin novels are "contrived." Hello, it's fiction. It isn't there to educate, except insofar as the situations the characters find themselves in teach you something about what it was like back then. Season 2, though, I couldn't watch.
  - calmworm 2y ago
    Completely inaccurate analogy using IASIP and Philly. lol.
  - jhbadger 2y ago
    I was annoyed by the C64's that were shown as having "C:>" prompts as if they were MS-DOS machines. I think I get where that was coming from -- people who were too young to remember the period were designing the sets and vaguely remembered that "old-timey" computers had "C:>" prompts and given that C64's are old computers, assumed they did too.
ghaff 2y ago
Such insightful commentary! I didn't find it a perfect show--especially latterly--but it captured a lot of the era, such as COMDEX, pretty well.
- assimpleaspossi 2y ago
  As insightful as the comment I replied to.
  - indigodaddy 2y ago
    Precisely
trollerator23 2y ago
[flagged]
- AlbertCory 2y ago
  No, you're wrong. I was there. It was mostly guys, but there were plenty of women as well. Radia Perlman, to name just one famous one. I recall another from Lawrence Livermore whom I met at an IETF. I went to grad school with several of them. There certainly is a lot of woke revisionist BS around. No doubt about that. Edit: in my current book "This New Internet Thing" one of the characters, Cassie, wants to adopt a child as a single woman. I got advice on that process by Heidi Buelow (RIP), who was last at Oracle but worked on the Xerox Star, and adopted two children of her own (Cassie is not modeled on Heidi, except for that). Heidi unfortunately died while I was writing it, and I can't find any online obituary on her. Since we're talking about "back in the day" naturally some of those people have crossed the Great Divide. You can find a few women in here as well: https://decconnection.org/memorials.htm https://decconnection.org/memorials.htm Not a lot, of course. But not none.
- neilv 2y ago
  > The fact that one of the main characters is a "cool" girl at a time where all the characters were a bunch of nerdy guys From what I recall seeing as a kid, and when working in my teens, that wasn't too unlikely. There were a lot of women in computing, of various pre-Yahoo-IPO eras. I think the relative numbers diminished dramatically with the dotcom gold rush, and the newer bro cultures, and gatekeeping. Only in recent years have we started seeing more women in "tech" again.
- pjmorris 2y ago
  I'll add Judy Estrin to the list of cool girls from the time, in addition to the non-famous ones I worked with. Her little company stomped our big company at making X terminals back in the 80's. We were probably 70:30 M/F among our ~two dozen new grads.
- trollerator23 2y ago
  You guys have in fact proven my point by bringing up all two of them.

ErneX 2y ago

I agree.