Top
Best
New

Posted by turrini 12/6/2025

Screenshots from developers: 2002 vs. 2015 (2015)(anders.unix.se)
462 points | 243 commentspage 2
jd3 12/7/2025|
Dennis Ritchie running Rob Pike's acme editor on Windows back in July 2002.

https://anders.unix.se/images/dmr_screenshot.gif

https://anders.unix.se/2015/10/28/screenshots-from-developer...

munchler 12/7/2025|
I think you mean 2002, not 2022.
jd3 12/7/2025||
Thanks, typo; updated.
dijit 12/7/2025||
One thing I'm reflecting on here is just how boring these screen grabs are.

Even if I consider how my PC looked in 2002, the 2015 screenshots are far and away uglier than my desktop experience.

Yet... I produce... very little. At least when compared to these absolute titans, who have contributed much more to my computing experience than most - certainly more than myself, I find it somewhat unsettling.

This is how my laptop looked in 2015 (it's a screenshot from 2017, but the configs were the same): https://sh.drk.sc/~dijit/2017-11-19-003840_4480x1440_scrot.p...

sph 7 days ago|
Tongue in cheek here, but no wonder you produce little with so many distractions. Two shells full of text, music and IRC open - how is one supposed to concentrate?

I still produce little, but I have come to realize only pure, unadulterated silence free from any sort or distraction, however minimal, is worth anything. When I used IRC, not much was accomplished apart from chatting on IRC.

dijit 7 days ago||
valid.

In general I find it best to close down my IM app of choice these days totally.

ekjhgkejhgk 12/7/2025||
Hey this one over here [1] has a virtual desktop minimap on the top right. That person mentions fvwm which has this [2] website with screenshots, but I don't see the minimap there. Could someone help me find a reference to it?

Update: Also on the bottom left here [3]

[1] https://anders.unix.se/images/desktop_warren_toomey.gif

[2] https://www.fvwm.org/

[3] https://anders.unix.se/images/desktop_jordan_hubbard.jpg

arexxbifs 12/7/2025|
The one in the FVWM screenshot is FvwmPager. It comes with FVWM.
ekjhgkejhgk 12/7/2025||
So I can't just use it by itself. E.g. I use i3wm, would those work together? Sorry if it's a stupid question.
bilegeek 12/7/2025||
No. It's FVWM-specific.
lieuwex 12/7/2025||
Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10722536
Simplita 12/7/2025||
This brought back memories. It’s wild how much tooling changed in a decade. The contrast really shows how much developer experience has improved.
Mistletoe 12/7/2025||
I'd give anything to see their 2025 desktops.
mindentropy 12/7/2025||
Can someone identify what font Bram Moolenaar was using in 2015 screen shot?
chris67 7 days ago|
Looks like Liberation Mono or Cousine or similar.
mindentropy 6 days ago||
It looks like Liberation Mono. Cousine has a specific "r" and it does not match.
chickensong 12/7/2025||
Haha love that jerkcity is featured in Jordan's screenshot!
DonHopkins 12/7/2025|
Jordan's the rapscallion who scribbled all over Dennis G. Perry's Interleaf windows (program manager of the Arpanet in the Information Science and Technology Office of DARPA) with his infamous global rwall on March 31, 1987.

Milo Medin said "Dennis was absolutely livid, and I recall him saying something about shutting off UCB's PSN ports if this happened again."

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31822138

    From: Milo S. Medin <medin@orion.arpa>
    Date: Apr 6, 1987, 5:06 AM

    Actually, Dennis Perry is the head of DARPA/IPTO, not a pencil pusher
    in the IG's office.  IPTO is the part of DARPA that deals with all
    CS issues (including funding for ARPANET, BSD, MACH, SDINET, etc...).
    Calling him part of the IG's office on the TCP/IP list probably didn't
    win you any favors.  Coincidentally I was at a meeting at the Pentagon
    last Thursday that Dennis was at, along with Mike Corrigan (the man
    at DoD/OSD responsible for all of DDN), and a couple other such types
    discussing Internet management issues, when your little incident
    came up.  Dennis was absolutely livid, and I recall him saying something
    about shutting off UCB's PSN ports if this happened again.  There were
    also reports about the DCA management types really putting on the heat
    about turning on Mailbridge filtering now and not after the buttergates
    are deployed.  I don't know if Mike St. Johns and company can hold them
    off much longer.  Sigh...  Mike Corrigan mentioned that this was the sort
    of thing that gets networks shut off.  You really pissed off the wrong
    people with this move! 

    Dennis also called up some VP at SUN and demanded this hole
    be patched in the next release.  People generally pay attention
    to such people.

                                            Milo
chickensong 12/7/2025||
Hah, thanks for that bit of fitting lore. HONK!
shevy-java 12/7/2025|
Interesting how Brian works. I guess it is the UNIX spirit he carries there. Or perhaps he is damn fast with the tabbed WM. Or is that OSX?

I use mostly IceWM these days. I can't use the leaner WMs such as ion or ratpoison and XFCE, mate-desktop, KDE and GNOME are too slow or too crap (KDE unfortunately also now; before that only GNOME was crap. KDE killing xorg-support also means it is one less thing I can use anyway.)

sho_hn 12/7/2025|
Out of curiosity, why's xorg a blocker for you?
More comments...