Well, yeah. Back in the mid-80's, software needed to be usable on a computer with a single 360KB floppy drive. (No HD, no SSD, no USB, no network, no ...) And even a big budget for RAM - which cost many orders of magnitude more than today - would really not get you around Bill Gates' 640KB DOS memory limit.

Comparing to current-day stuff is kinda like comparing battery-powered bathtub toys to jetskis.

▲

probably_wrong an hour ago | parent | next [-]

Those "bathtub toys" built the entire modern infrastructure, parts of which are still chugging along. If anything, I'd put the onus on software developers - like John Carmack said in 2005, "there is something deeply wrong when text editing on a 3.6 ghz processor is anything but instantaneous".

Software in the 80s showed what's possible when you really care about doing it. Software in the last 15 years feels like an exercise on what happens when you don't.

▲

BobBagwill 43 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

More like comparing a racing kayak to a leaky container ship burning sulfurous bunker fuel carrying a load of short-lived consumer junk. :-)

	▲	MonkeyClub 30 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Yet at the same time, one is a pastime for an affluent lifestyle while the other is driving the global economy. Interestingly, or ironically, the former was probably put on the shelves by means of the latter. If there is any positive progress to be made, the rethinking necessary must go much, much deeper than the superficial flesh of the problem, but there it’s bound to hit upon the sinews and bones of vested interests. In all, as I’m growing older and see the world trudge along the same lines it did centuries ago, I’m more and more pessimistic about the possibility of people agreeing that the sacrifices necessary will be made. Short-term stakeholder interests seem to trump any notions of longer-term greater good.

▲

an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

[deleted]

▲

an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

[deleted]

▲

an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

[deleted]