91–100 of 114 posts
"But the euphoria of a faster disk drive and seemingly limitless disk space eventually gives way to the realization that you can fill up even 10 megabytes sooner than you think." [0]
Especially if you read back issues of byte at ~200mb per PDF :D
[0] https://ia800701.us.archive.org/1/items/byte-magazine-1984-0...
I was a minor figure in the starting of Byte back in, what 1974? Can't remember the year. I worked with Carl Helmers (original editor, who had a hobbyist micro newsletter already going, dealing with 8008's, etc.) and Dan Fylstra (a friend from high school days in San Diego, later founder of Visicorp, publisher of Visicalc, the first "killer app" in the PC world) at Intermetrics in Cambridge (Fresh Pond), a gov't cons…
Dan went on to found Visicorp after MIT and Harvard Business School, Lynn worked with him there to make VisiOn, a much ahead-of-its-time windowing OS for the PC, which eventually brought down VisiCorp, and Henry ended up at Microsoft as Gates's right-hand man for years.
Odd group.
Interesting reading these in the light of excessively intrusive advertising on websites being one of HN's favourite dead horses to beat. I'm reading the smalltalk issue and the introductory editorial has a hyphenated word split over a two page ad spread plus a half page ad on the page it finishes on. Which is also opposite a full page ad. (the next two pages are ads)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Funny people credit AWS or Apple... Neither really convinced people unix was worth it in such a way that Sun Solaris did. Too bad they collapsed and oracle of all places snagged 'em.
You mean SunOS -- Solaris is quite new.
I like the headline for the issue from September 1992: Is Unix Dead? Soon Unix will face its most powerful adversary to date: Microsoft Windows NT. Will Unix Survive?
If AWS didn't use Linux for servers and Apple chose to buy BeOS instead of NeXT, would Unix be around as prominently as it is right now?
BYTE was great, sort of a microcomputing version of the more upmarket mini-/mainframe Datamation magazine. But as a hobbyist I was more drawn to Creative Computing [1] and the even funkier Compute! [2] magazine in its exclamation point heyday. 1. https://archive.org/details/creativecomputing 2. https://archive.org/details/compute-magazine
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr._Dobb%27s_Journal
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C/C%2B%2B_Users_Journal
Both of them used to have really solid programming content for quite a while. BYTE, IIRC, became much commercial and ad-oriented in its later years, with less of quality tech content for makers, and more of product reviews and such, instead.
I started reading Byte in the mid-80's, while at tech school. It was a great source of information on all kinds of computing subjects. It began to lose it's attraction (for me) when they stopped publishing source code. I still have a paper copy of Volume 5, number 11. The Huffman encoding article showed a very creative way of recursively writing out the code-tree for static Huffman encoding. I can't remember which is…
I remember reading that article in an old copy of BYTE that I picked up at a used book shop. The article was really good. It was early in my career and I remember being thinking what a cool algorithm it was, and felt good that I could understand how it worked. IIRC, the author's name was Jonathan Amsterdam.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is one close to me in the DC area. The biggest thing is that they have just about everything you would want a computer/electronics store to have ... machines (PC and Apple), components, networking gear, highend gaming peripherals, hobbyist electronics/computers, repair services and a bunch of other related products and toys. Sometimes at work we are looking up server components for an upgrade/replacement, netwo…
> Most of this stuff just isn't available anywhere else in one place except online at this point. By anywhere else, do you mean _near you_? In a word, Frys. hahah
BYTE was great, sort of a microcomputing version of the more upmarket mini-/mainframe Datamation magazine. But as a hobbyist I was more drawn to Creative Computing [1] and the even funkier Compute! [2] magazine in its exclamation point heyday. 1. https://archive.org/details/creativecomputing 2. https://archive.org/details/compute-magazine
CUJ (C User's Journal, but it covered C++ too) and DDJ (Dr. Dobb's Journal) were great too. Not sure about CUJ, but DDJ stopped a few years ago. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr._Dobb%27s_Journal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C/C%2B%2B_Users_Journal Both of them used to have really solid programming content for quite a while. BYTE, IIRC, became much commercial and ad-oriented in its later years, with less of quality…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr._Dobb%27s_Journal#End
http://www.drdobbs.com/architecture-and-design/farewell-dr-d...
I started reading Byte in the mid-80's, while at tech school. It was a great source of information on all kinds of computing subjects. It began to lose it's attraction (for me) when they stopped publishing source code. I still have a paper copy of Volume 5, number 11. The Huffman encoding article showed a very creative way of recursively writing out the code-tree for static Huffman encoding. I can't remember which is…
>I still have a paper copy of Volume 5, number 11. The Huffman encoding article showed a very creative way of recursively writing out the code-tree for static Huffman encoding. I remember reading that article in an old copy of BYTE that I picked up at a used book shop. The article was really good. It was early in my career and I remember being thinking what a cool algorithm it was, and felt good that I could understa…