7 ms·

Halt and Catch Fire Syllabus (2021)

182 points by Kye 1y ago

kennywinker 1y ago
I recently watched all of Halt and Catch Fire, and i have to say it is a really special show. The first season is fun, but it really comes into its own in the following seasons, exploring long relationships, friendship, growth, and love in ways that really surprised me. Highly recommend.
- floren 1y ago
  I recently finished it too! I was pretty over it by the final season, but then the last few episodes brought me back around. Cameron "it's all in the eyes" Howe annoyed the shit out of me at pretty much all points, which I understand is how they wrote the character but it walked a line of almost making me quit the show. As with the show as a whole, though, she brought me around a bit in the last few eps.
- awesome_dude 1y ago
  Silicon Cowboys[1] came out roughly the same time, and it always struck me how similar the first season of HCF was to the actual documentary of Compaq's rise https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4938484/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4938484/
- hnlmorg 1y ago
  I was largely disappointed. The subject matter was special but the execution was over the top. Every time I was starting to get drawn in, there would be another affair, car crash, exploding lorry or something else just as forced. I can’t even remember the number of times it felt like they’d “jumped the shark” in even just the first season alone. There really wasn’t any need for half the dumb shit they did in that show. It didn’t add to the drama, it just made the whole thing feel completely fake. Which is impressive considering they’re writing largely about real world computing history. And don’t get me started on the characters themselves. I think I liked maybe half the cast. The others made me cringe every time they were on screen. It’s such a pity because they could have just as successful show if they refined it a little.
  - aspenmayer 1y ago
    This complaint largely lands on the same points as the ones against Mr. Robot, and it has some merit, but the shows are made for cable TV audiences, so they're a bit more niche than broadcast shows, but they're mass market vehicles. They're nearly pushing a rope to make this content entertaining at all. If people cared, they'd already know the history and the social implications of the technology, as well as the personalities involved. These kinds of shows are meant to bring more folks into the industry and help folks see the humanity in each other and in themselves if they're in it. Most folks don't watch tv for anything but storylines and personalities, so historical or current relevance in entertainment is something I'll take where and when I can get it. What are some tech shows that you like, or dramas, for context?
    - hnlmorg 1y ago
      I’m not suggesting the show should be factually accurate. I’m saying it doesn’t need pyrotechnics to be engaging. Mr Robot was a different beast because that was literally about criminal and hacker culture. So you’d expect a little action in that regard. To put it another way: you have shows that have strong enough writers where they don’t need gimmicks to keep your attention. And you have shows that are intentionally about the gimmicks. Then you have shows that aren’t about the gimmicks but the writers don’t have enough confidence in their work to avoid putting them in anyway. Shows like The West Wing, House of Cards etc aren’t about gimmicks and don’t need them. Shows like Stargate are about the gimmicks. And that’s ok too because you know it’s meant to be silly drama. But shows like HCF feel like they should be executed like HoCs, yet they’re written like Mr Robot, Stargate, etc. So it’s very jarring to watch every time another gimmick gets thrown in. Maybe I expected too much from that show? But it just felt like they didn’t have any confidence in people’s attention spans.
      - aspenmayer 1y ago
        > To put it another way: you have shows that have strong enough writers where they don’t need gimmicks to keep your attention. And you have shows that are intentionally about the gimmicks. Then you have shows that aren’t about the gimmicks but the writers don’t have enough confidence in their work to avoid putting them in anyway. Can you elaborate a bit about the gimmick(s) in Halt and Catch Fire? I think it's a drama, so there are human concerns and interactions, but that's like, what tv shows are? I don't know what you mean specifically. > Shows like The West Wing, House of Cards etc aren’t about gimmicks and don’t need them. The West Wing is statist propaganda for liberals. House of Cards is statist propaganda for neocons. > Shows like Mr Robot are about the gimmicks. And that’s ok too because you know it’s meant to be silly drama. I actually really appreciate that every hack shown on Mr. Robot had a real world POC and used actually existing tools and techniques. The storyline is hokum and gives hackers a bad name, but black hats are kinda supposed to have a bad name. Elliot is kinda gray hat, but he definitely violated CFAA multiple times and would probably be dead or in jail irl.
- udev4096 1y ago
  It's so good and criminally underrated. Edit: removed spoilers
  - MattGrommes 1y ago
    Spoilers! If HN has spoiler text maybe use that or redact. The shock is part of the importance of that event I think.
TZubiri 1y ago
This looks like one of the best weekend plans I've seen in a long time. Will see if anyone locally is up for it. The length of the plan seems like a DnD campaign in terms of length though, it's roughly 3 months of consistent activities, but it may be worth it.
- OhMeadhbh 1y ago
  be sure to invite some grey-hairs so they can tell you more stories of tech in the 80s.
riazrizvi 1y ago
Very nice! Love the CRT TV style. In terms of approach I’m a bit confused by the call for a ‘book club style watch party’ and the content which follows an education course format. With the first I expect a CTA button to join a session, maybe a scheduled Discord session or Sign-Up list for interest of same. So maybe the format of the program is an online meetup, with a short talk, and then discussion. The point here is community. With the second I expect a CTA for a course, with the end result being some type of qualification, perhaps conformance to the startup mentality of the key characters, to help people form groups. The point there is to advance projects and also set yourself up as an authority. At the moment it feels like a not-so-strong mix of the two.
dang 1y ago
Discussed at the time (of the article): Halt and Catch Fire Syllabus - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25912241 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25912241 - Jan 2021 (173 comments)
drannex 1y ago
One of the greatest shows ever created, absolutely amazing resource here.
alephnerd 1y ago
Personally, I felt HCF was a much better reflection of the tech industry compared to Silicon Valley. While I love both shows to death, I feel HCF really nailed a lot of the emotional and interpersonal aspects that come with entrepreneurship, venture capital, and engineering leadership. It was also great watching HCF with my dad who started his career during the tail end of the show, and could call out a number of the technical aspects (eg. PBXes, the COBOL vs OOP wars, the search engine wars, etc).
- floren 1y ago
  Some of it drove me a little nuts, like s4's insistence on using Sun workstations everywhere but showing MS Windows or NeXT software running on them. Yes I know x86 boards were available but people weren't buying $30k computers just to run software designed for $3k computers.
- OhMeadhbh 1y ago
  yup. I was in tech in Dallas in the 80s and early 90s before chasing the money to sili Valley. I laughed for weeks at the short vignettes of Donna talking about and dealing with Texas Instrudlements management. They got it SPOT ON. Even the guy wearing the 3 piece suit interviewing Donna on her way out.
tbir 1y ago
Billion Dollar Code on Netlfix is a nice apertif to run the same experiment (watch club + research) on in a shorter commitment budget.
- elcapitan 1y ago
  Oh wow, I had no idea they made a miniseries about ART+COM. I had heard of that company many times as a connection point of people associated with the Chaos Computer Club, but never looked into it.
shortrounddev2 1y ago
I liked HCF as a show but I couldnt stand Cameron. It seems like you could always rely on her to do the wrong thing
- floren 1y ago
  Somewhere in season 2 I realized that a huge portion of Cameron was just "say something needlessly hostile or combative, then emphasize it by making your eyes really wide"
  - shortrounddev2 1y ago
    She was alright in season 1. She was young and inexperienced and she got too much shit from other people. In season 2/3 she has money and her own company and anytime anyone with more experience than her gives her even the smallest amount of advice she responds like someone is trying to break into her house. Worse, when someone has a good idea that isnt hers, she shuts it down
    - kennywinker 1y ago
      The point, to me, was that it’s a show about flawed people. Cameron’s flaws were frustrating sometimes, but so were Joe’s, Gordon’s, Donna’s flaws. She was chasing something… (the thing that computers get us to? Connection?) and was constantly worried someone was going to wreck it by taking it in the wrong direction. Like what happened in s01 with the interactive chat based OS she was building.
      - shortrounddev2 1y ago
        I dont remember donna having any flaws, shes just surrounded by morons and babies When donna pointed out how popular chat was, cameron wanted to kill it because it wasnt her idea, even if it was perfectly in line with her vision for what computers could be. To me she's just an arrogant narcissist
        1y ago
throw0101c 1y ago
It was observed at the time that it passed: > The Bechdel test (/ˈbɛkdəl/ ⓘ BEK-dəl),[1] also known as the Bechdel-Wallace test, is a measure of the representation of women in film and other fiction. The test asks whether a work features at least two women who have a conversation about something other than a man. Some versions of the test also require that those two women have names.[2] * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bechdel_test https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bechdel_test
swaptr 1y ago
> “Computers aren’t the thing; they’re the thing that gets us to the thing.” I used to be overly pedantic about the kinds of things programmers often obsess over—like micro-benchmarks, the whole “I use Arch, by the way” attitude, and other obnoxious quirks. But this quote stuck with me and helped me move past that shallow, one-upmanship view of computers. Great show to ones who haven't watched yet.
- godelski 1y ago
  It's a great line. I think our current tech industry has forgotten this. You can't make a product for everyone but you can make an environment for everyone. Something that can be adapted for (almost) anyone. Take the phone industry. They're happily gouging developers, taking large sums of app sales. But at the same time, a smart phone isn't a smart phone without apps. Everyone has different ones installed and ones they highly depend on that aren't from Apple/Google. It's the program that makes the tool. But this kind of thing is happening more and more and can only happen because consolidation. It maximizes profits for today but at the cost of higher future profits and better products. It's funny how there was a strong counter culture early on but it feels like that was lost.
Mountain_Skies 1y ago
Loved the show but the biggest problem was that the same core group of characters kept being the top innovators in wave after wave of advancements. I do wonder if the writers and producers planned on handling that differently but backed out when the main characters turned out to be more popular than expected. In season one, Joe and Gordon are the main characters, with Cameron a small step behind them. Donna and Bos were firmly secondary. In season two, Cam and Donna became the focus, Bos became more prominent, and we got a bunch of new characters. Joe and Gordon were still important but clearly had less focus on them. I have to wonder if the plan was for each season to introduce new characters who would be set up to be the season after that's main focus. The Mutiny crew could have been pioneers of gaming in the third season, with some Donna and Cam still there, and special appearances by Gordon and Joe. The new characters from that season could be the main of the internet/virus season. For consistency, Bos could have been the common thread in all of the companies as the business manager going along for the ride as the main characters innovated. Maybe that wasn't the plan and I'm just spit balling but it would have been a nice way of handling the advancing technology without making the same characters the titans of industry constantly. Not sure how well the fans would have reacted to their favorite characters, even Cameron, being relegated and eventually ghosted.
- elcapitan 1y ago
  I just binged the show a few weeks ago for the first time, and while that was my impression as well, I then realized that while being unrealistic in a literal sense, it represents well that a lot of major "big things" were always kind of in the air for innovative people, and in the end a mix of luck, speed and execution wins. On the realistic side, they stand for all those people who tried to be in that group of winners and lost. On the negative side, I also thought that sometimes makes for sloppy writing and the feeling that the characters are basically cosplaying history.
kid64 1y ago
If you get a chance, go back and check out the C64 power LEDs. They're all off. I suppose they intended to CGI the red glow in later but went overbudget? In fairness, I didn't notice this until my 2nd time watching the series.
- b112 1y ago
  I wonder if they got confused with the Amiga, which had an audio bypass filter which was off, when the led was off. I don't know anyone that didn't do so, an everyone's power LEDs were off, as a result, on Amigas.
  - dan_hawkins 1y ago
    European Amigas got Power LED dimmed instead of being completely off.
    - b112 1y ago
      Come to think of it, I think the same was true for me too. Some models needed a hardware hack to turn it off, maybe those ones were off.
snozolli 1y ago
Everyone in here is critiquing the intricacies of plot and forced drama, and here I was just annoyed by the regular expression on a chalkboard behind Cameron when she was working on implementing a BIOS, and the fact that a Jeep Comanche pickup outside of a motel -- a vehicle that was either brand new or not even yet released -- had badly oxidized paint.
martinrue 1y ago
Easily one of my favourite "tech" TV shows. But now I'm curious, has anyone recently found something similar to HCF that they similarly enjoyed? I've never found anything I've enjoyed quite as much as HCF.
- pajamasam 1y ago
  Mr Robot was right up there for me.
  - udev4096 1y ago
    It's one of the shows which gets better every season. Season four was so good, absolutely loved it!
puff_pastry 1y ago
HCF! Such a great show! I’ve rewatched it last year and, like a really good book, I found myself liking a different set of characters than on my first watch. There’s truly a lot of depth there. And a lot of humanity, which is something we sometimes forget about the tech industry.
elcapitan 1y ago
Sadly the WorldWideWeb emulator link from 11 (www) [1] doesn't seem to be working anymore: https://worldwideweb.cern.ch/browser https://worldwideweb.cern.ch/browser Looks like it's 404 since February. [2] Any idea what happened? [1] https://bits.ashleyblewer.com/halt-and-catch-fire-syllabus/classes/11.html https://bits.ashleyblewer.com/halt-and-catch-fire-syllabus/c... [2] http://web.archive.org/web/20250000000000*/https://worldwideweb.cern.ch/browser http://web.archive.org/web/20250000000000*/https://worldwide...
OhMeadhbh 1y ago
I may have to develop additional content. The thing I noticed about the show is they got many obscure details of life in Dallas in the 80s correct. The neighborhood they filmed Gordon and Donna's house in? It looked very much like Richardson. [though I'm pretty sure it was actually Atlanta.] Joe's condo? It looked very much like some condos they put in on the north side of Woodall Rogers. The night club? Just like the Starck Club. Even the house Donna and Cameron set up Mutiny looked very much like a friend's house on Vickery. [again, most certainly shot in Atlanta] I read the production designers used old issues of Texas Homes, D Magazine and sears catalogs as visual guides, and it really shows through. I had a very strong nostalgic reaction. The only thing missing was an avocado green refrigerator. I think it would be fun to take some of the shots and then try to find photos of places, people and things that might have influenced the designers.
OhMeadhbh 1y ago
Thinking about HCF, they did a better than average job of showing Women in Tech. I worked at IBM and DEC in the 80s and maybe as many as one third of Programmer / Analyst positions were held by women. IIRC, 1985 was the peak at IBM and it started falling after that. But my memory was female software engineers did not seem as much an endangered species as they do now. All of the characters had flaws, but I appreciated the representation. Though I suspect the flaws were added for dramatic effect. Perfect people doing perfect things doesn't make for drama.
AChamarthy91 1y ago
Favorite show of all time....a few members of the cast were at the 10th anniversary panel as part the ATX Television Festival last year ! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6L1suN-mGE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6L1suN-mGE
pajamasam 1y ago
Yay, great excuse to rewatch the show!
ilyagr 1y ago
The intro for the show is quite nice. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ucSUs3adMQ8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ucSUs3adMQ8 https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=halt+and+catch+fire+intro https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=halt+and+catch+...

182 points by Kye 1y ago

I recently watched all of Halt and Catch Fire, and i have to say it is a really special show. The first season is fun, but it really comes into its own in the following seasons, exploring long relationships, friendship, growth, and love in ways that really surprised me. Highly recommend.

floren 1y ago
I recently finished it too! I was pretty over it by the final season, but then the last few episodes brought me back around. Cameron "it's all in the eyes" Howe annoyed the shit out of me at pretty much all points, which I understand is how they wrote the character but it walked a line of almost making me quit the show. As with the show as a whole, though, she brought me around a bit in the last few eps.
awesome_dude 1y ago
Silicon Cowboys[1] came out roughly the same time, and it always struck me how similar the first season of HCF was to the actual documentary of Compaq's rise https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4938484/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4938484/
hnlmorg 1y ago
I was largely disappointed. The subject matter was special but the execution was over the top. Every time I was starting to get drawn in, there would be another affair, car crash, exploding lorry or something else just as forced. I can’t even remember the number of times it felt like they’d “jumped the shark” in even just the first season alone. There really wasn’t any need for half the dumb shit they did in that show. It didn’t add to the drama, it just made the whole thing feel completely fake. Which is impressive considering they’re writing largely about real world computing history. And don’t get me started on the characters themselves. I think I liked maybe half the cast. The others made me cringe every time they were on screen. It’s such a pity because they could have just as successful show if they refined it a little.
- aspenmayer 1y ago
  This complaint largely lands on the same points as the ones against Mr. Robot, and it has some merit, but the shows are made for cable TV audiences, so they're a bit more niche than broadcast shows, but they're mass market vehicles. They're nearly pushing a rope to make this content entertaining at all. If people cared, they'd already know the history and the social implications of the technology, as well as the personalities involved. These kinds of shows are meant to bring more folks into the industry and help folks see the humanity in each other and in themselves if they're in it. Most folks don't watch tv for anything but storylines and personalities, so historical or current relevance in entertainment is something I'll take where and when I can get it. What are some tech shows that you like, or dramas, for context?
  - hnlmorg 1y ago
    I’m not suggesting the show should be factually accurate. I’m saying it doesn’t need pyrotechnics to be engaging. Mr Robot was a different beast because that was literally about criminal and hacker culture. So you’d expect a little action in that regard. To put it another way: you have shows that have strong enough writers where they don’t need gimmicks to keep your attention. And you have shows that are intentionally about the gimmicks. Then you have shows that aren’t about the gimmicks but the writers don’t have enough confidence in their work to avoid putting them in anyway. Shows like The West Wing, House of Cards etc aren’t about gimmicks and don’t need them. Shows like Stargate are about the gimmicks. And that’s ok too because you know it’s meant to be silly drama. But shows like HCF feel like they should be executed like HoCs, yet they’re written like Mr Robot, Stargate, etc. So it’s very jarring to watch every time another gimmick gets thrown in. Maybe I expected too much from that show? But it just felt like they didn’t have any confidence in people’s attention spans.
    - aspenmayer 1y ago
      > To put it another way: you have shows that have strong enough writers where they don’t need gimmicks to keep your attention. And you have shows that are intentionally about the gimmicks. Then you have shows that aren’t about the gimmicks but the writers don’t have enough confidence in their work to avoid putting them in anyway. Can you elaborate a bit about the gimmick(s) in Halt and Catch Fire? I think it's a drama, so there are human concerns and interactions, but that's like, what tv shows are? I don't know what you mean specifically. > Shows like The West Wing, House of Cards etc aren’t about gimmicks and don’t need them. The West Wing is statist propaganda for liberals. House of Cards is statist propaganda for neocons. > Shows like Mr Robot are about the gimmicks. And that’s ok too because you know it’s meant to be silly drama. I actually really appreciate that every hack shown on Mr. Robot had a real world POC and used actually existing tools and techniques. The storyline is hokum and gives hackers a bad name, but black hats are kinda supposed to have a bad name. Elliot is kinda gray hat, but he definitely violated CFAA multiple times and would probably be dead or in jail irl.
udev4096 1y ago
It's so good and criminally underrated. Edit: removed spoilers
- MattGrommes 1y ago
  Spoilers! If HN has spoiler text maybe use that or redact. The shock is part of the importance of that event I think.

TZubiri 1y ago

This looks like one of the best weekend plans I've seen in a long time. Will see if anyone locally is up for it. The length of the plan seems like a DnD campaign in terms of length though, it's roughly 3 months of consistent activities, but it may be worth it.

OhMeadhbh 1y ago
be sure to invite some grey-hairs so they can tell you more stories of tech in the 80s.

riazrizvi 1y ago

Very nice! Love the CRT TV style. In terms of approach I’m a bit confused by the call for a ‘book club style watch party’ and the content which follows an education course format. With the first I expect a CTA button to join a session, maybe a scheduled Discord session or Sign-Up list for interest of same. So maybe the format of the program is an online meetup, with a short talk, and then discussion. The point here is community. With the second I expect a CTA for a course, with the end result being some type of qualification, perhaps conformance to the startup mentality of the key characters, to help people form groups. The point there is to advance projects and also set yourself up as an authority. At the moment it feels like a not-so-strong mix of the two.

dang 1y ago

Discussed at the time (of the article): Halt and Catch Fire Syllabus - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25912241 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25912241 - Jan 2021 (173 comments)

drannex 1y ago

One of the greatest shows ever created, absolutely amazing resource here.

alephnerd 1y ago

Personally, I felt HCF was a much better reflection of the tech industry compared to Silicon Valley. While I love both shows to death, I feel HCF really nailed a lot of the emotional and interpersonal aspects that come with entrepreneurship, venture capital, and engineering leadership. It was also great watching HCF with my dad who started his career during the tail end of the show, and could call out a number of the technical aspects (eg. PBXes, the COBOL vs OOP wars, the search engine wars, etc).

floren 1y ago
Some of it drove me a little nuts, like s4's insistence on using Sun workstations everywhere but showing MS Windows or NeXT software running on them. Yes I know x86 boards were available but people weren't buying $30k computers just to run software designed for $3k computers.
OhMeadhbh 1y ago
yup. I was in tech in Dallas in the 80s and early 90s before chasing the money to sili Valley. I laughed for weeks at the short vignettes of Donna talking about and dealing with Texas Instrudlements management. They got it SPOT ON. Even the guy wearing the 3 piece suit interviewing Donna on her way out.

tbir 1y ago

Billion Dollar Code on Netlfix is a nice apertif to run the same experiment (watch club + research) on in a shorter commitment budget.

elcapitan 1y ago
Oh wow, I had no idea they made a miniseries about ART+COM. I had heard of that company many times as a connection point of people associated with the Chaos Computer Club, but never looked into it.

shortrounddev2 1y ago

I liked HCF as a show but I couldnt stand Cameron. It seems like you could always rely on her to do the wrong thing

floren 1y ago
Somewhere in season 2 I realized that a huge portion of Cameron was just "say something needlessly hostile or combative, then emphasize it by making your eyes really wide"
- shortrounddev2 1y ago
  She was alright in season 1. She was young and inexperienced and she got too much shit from other people. In season 2/3 she has money and her own company and anytime anyone with more experience than her gives her even the smallest amount of advice she responds like someone is trying to break into her house. Worse, when someone has a good idea that isnt hers, she shuts it down
  - kennywinker 1y ago
    The point, to me, was that it’s a show about flawed people. Cameron’s flaws were frustrating sometimes, but so were Joe’s, Gordon’s, Donna’s flaws. She was chasing something… (the thing that computers get us to? Connection?) and was constantly worried someone was going to wreck it by taking it in the wrong direction. Like what happened in s01 with the interactive chat based OS she was building.
    - shortrounddev2 1y ago
      I dont remember donna having any flaws, shes just surrounded by morons and babies When donna pointed out how popular chat was, cameron wanted to kill it because it wasnt her idea, even if it was perfectly in line with her vision for what computers could be. To me she's just an arrogant narcissist
      - 1y ago

throw0101c 1y ago

It was observed at the time that it passed: > The Bechdel test (/ˈbɛkdəl/ ⓘ BEK-dəl),[1] also known as the Bechdel-Wallace test, is a measure of the representation of women in film and other fiction. The test asks whether a work features at least two women who have a conversation about something other than a man. Some versions of the test also require that those two women have names.[2] * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bechdel_test https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bechdel_test

swaptr 1y ago

> “Computers aren’t the thing; they’re the thing that gets us to the thing.” I used to be overly pedantic about the kinds of things programmers often obsess over—like micro-benchmarks, the whole “I use Arch, by the way” attitude, and other obnoxious quirks. But this quote stuck with me and helped me move past that shallow, one-upmanship view of computers. Great show to ones who haven't watched yet.

godelski 1y ago
It's a great line. I think our current tech industry has forgotten this. You can't make a product for everyone but you can make an environment for everyone. Something that can be adapted for (almost) anyone. Take the phone industry. They're happily gouging developers, taking large sums of app sales. But at the same time, a smart phone isn't a smart phone without apps. Everyone has different ones installed and ones they highly depend on that aren't from Apple/Google. It's the program that makes the tool. But this kind of thing is happening more and more and can only happen because consolidation. It maximizes profits for today but at the cost of higher future profits and better products. It's funny how there was a strong counter culture early on but it feels like that was lost.

Mountain_Skies 1y ago

Loved the show but the biggest problem was that the same core group of characters kept being the top innovators in wave after wave of advancements. I do wonder if the writers and producers planned on handling that differently but backed out when the main characters turned out to be more popular than expected. In season one, Joe and Gordon are the main characters, with Cameron a small step behind them. Donna and Bos were firmly secondary. In season two, Cam and Donna became the focus, Bos became more prominent, and we got a bunch of new characters. Joe and Gordon were still important but clearly had less focus on them. I have to wonder if the plan was for each season to introduce new characters who would be set up to be the season after that's main focus. The Mutiny crew could have been pioneers of gaming in the third season, with some Donna and Cam still there, and special appearances by Gordon and Joe. The new characters from that season could be the main of the internet/virus season. For consistency, Bos could have been the common thread in all of the companies as the business manager going along for the ride as the main characters innovated. Maybe that wasn't the plan and I'm just spit balling but it would have been a nice way of handling the advancing technology without making the same characters the titans of industry constantly. Not sure how well the fans would have reacted to their favorite characters, even Cameron, being relegated and eventually ghosted.

elcapitan 1y ago
I just binged the show a few weeks ago for the first time, and while that was my impression as well, I then realized that while being unrealistic in a literal sense, it represents well that a lot of major "big things" were always kind of in the air for innovative people, and in the end a mix of luck, speed and execution wins. On the realistic side, they stand for all those people who tried to be in that group of winners and lost. On the negative side, I also thought that sometimes makes for sloppy writing and the feeling that the characters are basically cosplaying history.

kid64 1y ago

If you get a chance, go back and check out the C64 power LEDs. They're all off. I suppose they intended to CGI the red glow in later but went overbudget? In fairness, I didn't notice this until my 2nd time watching the series.

b112 1y ago
I wonder if they got confused with the Amiga, which had an audio bypass filter which was off, when the led was off. I don't know anyone that didn't do so, an everyone's power LEDs were off, as a result, on Amigas.
- dan_hawkins 1y ago
  European Amigas got Power LED dimmed instead of being completely off.
  - b112 1y ago
    Come to think of it, I think the same was true for me too. Some models needed a hardware hack to turn it off, maybe those ones were off.

snozolli 1y ago

Everyone in here is critiquing the intricacies of plot and forced drama, and here I was just annoyed by the regular expression on a chalkboard behind Cameron when she was working on implementing a BIOS, and the fact that a Jeep Comanche pickup outside of a motel -- a vehicle that was either brand new or not even yet released -- had badly oxidized paint.

martinrue 1y ago

Easily one of my favourite "tech" TV shows. But now I'm curious, has anyone recently found something similar to HCF that they similarly enjoyed? I've never found anything I've enjoyed quite as much as HCF.

pajamasam 1y ago
Mr Robot was right up there for me.
- udev4096 1y ago
  It's one of the shows which gets better every season. Season four was so good, absolutely loved it!

puff_pastry 1y ago

HCF! Such a great show! I’ve rewatched it last year and, like a really good book, I found myself liking a different set of characters than on my first watch. There’s truly a lot of depth there. And a lot of humanity, which is something we sometimes forget about the tech industry.

elcapitan 1y ago

Sadly the WorldWideWeb emulator link from 11 (www) [1] doesn't seem to be working anymore: https://worldwideweb.cern.ch/browser https://worldwideweb.cern.ch/browser Looks like it's 404 since February. [2] Any idea what happened? [1] https://bits.ashleyblewer.com/halt-and-catch-fire-syllabus/classes/11.html https://bits.ashleyblewer.com/halt-and-catch-fire-syllabus/c... [2] http://web.archive.org/web/20250000000000*/https://worldwideweb.cern.ch/browser http://web.archive.org/web/20250000000000*/https://worldwide...

OhMeadhbh 1y ago

I may have to develop additional content. The thing I noticed about the show is they got many obscure details of life in Dallas in the 80s correct. The neighborhood they filmed Gordon and Donna's house in? It looked very much like Richardson. [though I'm pretty sure it was actually Atlanta.] Joe's condo? It looked very much like some condos they put in on the north side of Woodall Rogers. The night club? Just like the Starck Club. Even the house Donna and Cameron set up Mutiny looked very much like a friend's house on Vickery. [again, most certainly shot in Atlanta] I read the production designers used old issues of Texas Homes, D Magazine and sears catalogs as visual guides, and it really shows through. I had a very strong nostalgic reaction. The only thing missing was an avocado green refrigerator. I think it would be fun to take some of the shots and then try to find photos of places, people and things that might have influenced the designers.

OhMeadhbh 1y ago

Thinking about HCF, they did a better than average job of showing Women in Tech. I worked at IBM and DEC in the 80s and maybe as many as one third of Programmer / Analyst positions were held by women. IIRC, 1985 was the peak at IBM and it started falling after that. But my memory was female software engineers did not seem as much an endangered species as they do now. All of the characters had flaws, but I appreciated the representation. Though I suspect the flaws were added for dramatic effect. Perfect people doing perfect things doesn't make for drama.

AChamarthy91 1y ago

Favorite show of all time....a few members of the cast were at the 10th anniversary panel as part the ATX Television Festival last year ! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6L1suN-mGE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6L1suN-mGE

pajamasam 1y ago

Yay, great excuse to rewatch the show!

ilyagr 1y ago

The intro for the show is quite nice. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ucSUs3adMQ8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ucSUs3adMQ8 https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=halt+and+catch+fire+intro https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=halt+and+catch+...