4 ms·
The Soul of an Old Machine
- stackghost 6mo agoI also have a few machines I'm attached to. When I was fresh out of school I got a job at a startup writing PHP and bought myself an (at the time) brand new Thinkpad X220 with a Sandy Bridge i7 inside. My 9 year old has it now. The battery is toast but the machine still faithfully trundles along. It plays Rollercoaster Tycoon on Fedora Linux. We're building a robot together for her birthday, so I'll be trying to install the Arduino tool chain on it. I'll definitely miss that machine when it's no more.
- ge96 6mo agoLumia 920 for me, obsolete but I keep one around
- assimpleaspossi 6mo agoHmm. The desktop I'm using right now has an i7 in it and I do everything with it. Hmm.
- stackghost 6mo agoNot sure what your two "Hmm"'s are implying, but the i7 label has been reapplied to newer chips as time goes on, which is why I specified it was a Sandy Bridge-era chip.
- wkjagt 6mo agoWhich generation? Just i7 by itself doesn't mean much. I think the newest are like 14th generation? The X220 is only 2nd generation ("Sandy Bridge"), about 15 years old.
- assimpleaspossi 6mo agoIntel(R) Core(TM) i7-3770 CPU @ 3.40GHz (3403.48-MHz K8-class CPU). I think that's Ivy Bridge. I just don't pay attention. I think it's a year newer with a smaller die.
- wkjagt 6mo agoOh yeah that's not so recent either, but it helps that it's a desktop version. Yours has 4 cores, whereas for example my 7th gen i7 (Kaby Lake) laptop only has 2.It's about 10 years old, but still enough for everything I use it for. I am always impressed how much you can do with older hardware.
- dkdcdev 6mo agoI still need to read “The Soul of a New Machine”, should I save this until after?
- pulvinar 6mo agoIt's unrelated to the book, other than the title.
- shon 6mo agoStop reading HN and read the book now. You’re welcome. ;)
- engineer_22 6mo agoSoul of a New machine is a great read, never slow or self-gratifying, highly recommended
- jnsaff2 6mo agoThat's a great book to read, after that pick up The Cuckoo's Egg.
- JSR_FDED 6mo agoShould be compulsory reading. Actually, now that I think about it, this would make a great interview question in the AI era: “what did you think of Soul of a new machine?”
- abdulhaq 6mo agoI found Showstopper! even more compelling
- ghaff 6mo agoThose two books are probably the two best about tech projects I've ever read. I worked at Data General as a product manager for about 13 years and know many of the individuals although I joined a few years after the book was written.
- jonhohle 6mo agoI’ve held onto FireWire for long and feel attached to it. I’ve used it for over 25 years. I think I feel the same way about TiVo and fear the day the guide stops updating or the motherboard fails (everything else in the box is replaceable). These things are ephemeral in the grand scheme of history, but when they are embedded in workflows and habits for decades I find it hard to let go.