I was also there. It isn't rose-colored glasses. The tech truly was better back in the 90s and 2000s. Not perfect, certainly, but it was made by people who gave a damn and were trying to actually make good things. It wasn't like today, where most software is slop (not necessarily AI slop, but slop nonetheless) churned out by companies whose decisions are made solely by how much profit they can squeeze out no matter if the quality tanks.

No, we really did lose something along the way.

> It wasn't like today, where most software is slop

Did you ever use Window 3.1? Or any windows software?

Are you forgetting the multiple crashes per day? Or the incessant playing with system.cfg to get MSDOS drivers to work?

And Linux was only better because it didn't do much.

The only hardware damage software has ever caused was some 1994 Linux driver for a Trident video card getting a frequency wrong and frying a monitor.

> churned out by companies whose decisions are made solely by how much profit they can squeeze out no matter if the quality tanks.

As opposed to 1990's Microsoft or IBM?