Posted by DamnInteresting 18 hours ago
It was fun knowing everything about a computer. That's long gone!
Linus Torvalds, a few months ago, said something to this effect when discussing AI coding tools. That his (also, mine) generation was lucky to have started with low level stuff and managed to retain the understanding of the whole stack - and kids these days don't get that. Good luck acquiring this level of feel for computers, algorithms, data structures today, when a kid's first experience with coding will be a seemingly genius chatbot.
No one understands the whole stack. There is too much specialized information.
I'd also throw the wayback when machine and the internet archive into this bucket.
Microsoft's 6502 BASIC is now Open Source (2025) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48257058
I remember in the naughts, coming across a dos machine that was quite out of time… even for the university basement it was living in next to a pile of lead brick. Its only job was to run an instrument via an home-built ISA card and write data out to 5.25” floppies.
What uses would this code have in 2026?
About the worst mal-ware it can have is a boot sector that installs a "terminate, stay resident" (TSR) that copies itself onto any floppy that gets inserted.
Can we now have all the Infocom games owned by Activision (which is yours) now? Pretty please? I know the source is available, but we'd like them with a MIT license (including the manuals, artwork etc).
PS: a couple of them could be harder, like Shogun, but it's okay to skip these.