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One of my biggest regrets in my "journey" with computers is walking away from Commodore when Amiga was released. I felt it was superior to anything else I had s

One of my biggest regrets in my "journey" with computers is walking away from Commodore when Amiga was released. I felt it was superior to anything else I had seen, and I knew the Commodore 64 inside-out, but I just felt like PCs were for grown ups, and I needed to grow up. I needed to skate to where the puck was going, and that wasn't Commodore. I guess I was right, but I still regret it because all the dudes I knew that stuck with Commodore, with the new Amiga platform - well, they all seemed to be having more fun. I learned macros for Lotus 1-2-3, which was more practical (I made $$$ as a teenager teaching stiffs about macros), but my Amiga friends were making cool drum beats and sample-based music and remixes on their Amigas - totally impractical, but also fun as shit back then. So yeah, they were all having fun with their Amigas, while I became Alex P. Keaton.

aaronbaugher 1y ago
I stayed with Commodore, but with my 128, since I couldn't afford an Amiga. I envied my PC friends their VGA graphics, but yeah, the Commodores were a lot of fun. And I learned to program on it, which none of my friends were doing with their PCs. Once they went to PC, it seemed like they just used them to run software, and weren't interested in tinkering.
- neom 1y ago
  For me anyways: Amiga was learn what a computer can do, PC was learn how a computer works. PC was also my path to linux and linux changed my circumstances in life drastically. I get what the comment above you is saying, but I don't think the Amiga was more fun at the end of the day, PC ended up being much more challenging as a power user (therefore fun).
vidarh 1y ago
I still miss features from AmigaOS, to the point I've started adding some to my software. E.g. I've added "assigns" to my shell (very superficial integration), and it's so nice to be able to just create an alias for any path. It's hard to explain why it feels better, because you could "just" create a bunch of symlinks in one location, but being able to "cd projects:" instead of ~/Desktop/Projects just feels nicer. I've also added "implicit cd" when entering paths, so I can also do just "projects:" like on the Amiga. What made the Amiga special wasn't just the hardware, but a whole host of small extra niceties like that. Another favorite is datatypes: A uniform plugin-based API to open files of any type, ensuring Amiga software written decades ago can open modern image formats. And another one I love was the ability to open a new console window as a file path, so you could redirect shell output to a new window just as if it was a file. (it also took way too long before I remembered who Alex P. Keaton was...)
- icedchai 1y ago
  I also enjoyed these features! I used to have "downloads:" for all my BBS downloads, "docs:" for my papers, etc. The Amiga OS had some other interesting features, like the ability to attach comments to files as metadata ("filenote" command.)
  - vidarh 1y ago
    I use a script to create a dotfile with comments about a file, and an ls wrapper that outputs the comments if present for that reason as well. My setup is very slowly converging on getting back some of the things I enjoyed about AmigaOS... The challenge of course is that simulating it without rewriting every piece of software and/or replacing the kernel will always be a leaky abstraction, but I can at least do it for the basic desktop and terminal experience...

aaronbaugher 1y ago

I stayed with Commodore, but with my 128, since I couldn't afford an Amiga. I envied my PC friends their VGA graphics, but yeah, the Commodores were a lot of fun. And I learned to program on it, which none of my friends were doing with their PCs. Once they went to PC, it seemed like they just used them to run software, and weren't interested in tinkering.

neom 1y ago
For me anyways: Amiga was learn what a computer can do, PC was learn how a computer works. PC was also my path to linux and linux changed my circumstances in life drastically. I get what the comment above you is saying, but I don't think the Amiga was more fun at the end of the day, PC ended up being much more challenging as a power user (therefore fun).

vidarh 1y ago

I still miss features from AmigaOS, to the point I've started adding some to my software. E.g. I've added "assigns" to my shell (very superficial integration), and it's so nice to be able to just create an alias for any path. It's hard to explain why it feels better, because you could "just" create a bunch of symlinks in one location, but being able to "cd projects:" instead of ~/Desktop/Projects just feels nicer. I've also added "implicit cd" when entering paths, so I can also do just "projects:" like on the Amiga. What made the Amiga special wasn't just the hardware, but a whole host of small extra niceties like that. Another favorite is datatypes: A uniform plugin-based API to open files of any type, ensuring Amiga software written decades ago can open modern image formats. And another one I love was the ability to open a new console window as a file path, so you could redirect shell output to a new window just as if it was a file. (it also took way too long before I remembered who Alex P. Keaton was...)

icedchai 1y ago
I also enjoyed these features! I used to have "downloads:" for all my BBS downloads, "docs:" for my papers, etc. The Amiga OS had some other interesting features, like the ability to attach comments to files as metadata ("filenote" command.)
- vidarh 1y ago
  I use a script to create a dotfile with comments about a file, and an ls wrapper that outputs the comments if present for that reason as well. My setup is very slowly converging on getting back some of the things I enjoyed about AmigaOS... The challenge of course is that simulating it without rewriting every piece of software and/or replacing the kernel will always be a leaky abstraction, but I can at least do it for the basic desktop and terminal experience...