Olds go nostalgic for the good old days of tech

Culture
1134

1k per roll of film!

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1135

Well, that was quick shipping. Now I just need a load of free time. :smiley:

Z80

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1139

I used one of these beasts back in ~1986 for research. Low resolution digital imaging combined with a high speed video tape recorder that had to be spun up to speed before you could start recording. Sounded like a jet taking off.

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1140

I like it.

Worth it for the “handy storage compartment” alone.

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1141

I suspect there are cheaper storage units choices.

Fortunately we didn’t have to buy one. I borrowed one from another lab that already had one.

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1142

Ok, maybe not exactly the “good old days”, but…

“In its lifetime, Cheyenne delivered over 7 billion core-hours, served over 4,400 users, and supported nearly 1,300 NSF awards,” writes the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR) on its official Cheyenne information page. “It played a key role in education, supporting more than 80 university courses and training events. Nearly 1,000 projects were awarded for early-career graduate students and postdocs. Perhaps most tellingly, Cheyenne-powered research generated over 4,500 peer-review publications, dissertations and theses, and other works.”

Current bid: $35,085.00 (Reserve Not Met)

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1143

image

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1145

The Programming Languages Beacon

This table contains a list of major software products or utilities, with details about the programming languages used to implement them.
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1147

That is a simultaneously fascinating and bizarrely incomplete list.
A few random examples:

  • There are categories for both Web Sites and Web 2.0, but the distinction between these is unclear.
  • There is a category for 3D Engines:
    • It includes Microsoft DirectX and OpenGL, neither of which are engines.
      • DirectX is further not limited to 3D, that would be Direct3D.
    • Unity and OGRE3D are 3D engines, but there’s no mention of Unreal
    • id Tech would probably be a reasonable inclusion as well.
    • Maybe throw in Godot if you’re mentioning OGRE3D…
    • There’s no category for 2D Engines
  • There is a category for Web Browsers
    • There’s a single entry for Edge, which also seemingly encompasses Internet Explorer
    • There are separate entries for Netscape Navigator and Firefox, but no entry for Mozilla Suite, which was the, let’s say intermediate step between them.
  • PHP should probably have it’s own column, rather than being relegated to the Others. It shows up enough times as-is, and would likely represent a larger portion if other major projects (WordPress) were included.
    • This is not an endorsement for PHP, which I personally think is dreadful.

It’s absolutely a neat idea, although it feels like it should maybe be in a wiki of some sort so that it could be fleshed out further. It appears that the last update was in 2022, so that supports my proposal as well.

That’s probably enough pedantry for now…

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1148

The TL;dr seems to be “The world runs on C++”

Maybe @Crashproof was right :thinking:

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1149

If there’s ever going to be a successor to C/C++, it’s likely to be Rust:

In operating systems, Rust support has been added to Linux[167][168] and Android.[169][170] Microsoft is rewriting parts of Windows in Rust.[171] The r9 project aims to re-implement Plan 9 from Bell Labs in Rust.[172] Rust has been used in the development of new operating systems such as Redox, a “Unix-like” operating system and microkernel,[173] Theseus, an experimental operating system with modular state management,[174][175] and most of Fuchsia.[176] Rust is also used for command-line tools and operating system components, including stratisd, a file system manager[177][178] and COSMIC, a desktop environment by System76.[179][180]

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When I think about the movie Mary Poppins with regard to its special effects, I think about the bird that whistles during A Spoonful of Sugar and I imagine that people must have reacted very strongly to it. I never really thought about the animated sequences as being particularly noteworthy or groundbreaking, and it seems they were both.

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1151

I find it pretty egregious that it lists a category “Games” which states that all games were made in ASM or C, and are now made in C++. Seems one could equally say all “Business Software” is written in COBOL.

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1152

My wife was using some version of the Arpanet back in the 1980’s.

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Heavy computing.

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