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What Writing and Selling Software Was Like in the 80s
51–60 of 61 posts
Re: What Writing and Selling Software Was Like in the 80s
#52> Now in those days when you almost never sent out patch disks; generally you had to wait 6-8 months to ship a new version and you had to charge the customer for the update. Trapeze only needed one floppy but Deltagraph shipped on something like 10 disks. Paying for hundreds of thousands of disks is expensive; add to that printing of manual updates and boxes and shipping and you never did this casually. So the versio…
Now imagine if this was not "really impressive", but the norm today. Things would be so much better if we'd no longer need constant patches-upon-patches to fix what should've been fixed before release (while sometimes introducing new bugs), and users would spend more time doing useful work with the software instead of fighting it. As the article notes, this is all possible with a minimal of tools and resources, so I…
Modern software is a lot more complex than it used to be, with vastly more functionality. In terms of games, as just one example, the difference between the '80s and today is extreme. There's more coding and graphics work in just a tiny little throwaway piece of a world in modern games than there were in many '80s games.
Also, the level of bugs that are tolerable if you have no method for patching are different than if you do. Super Mario World, for example, has a number of bugs that are now quite well known, but those bugs are in general small enough to not warrant recalling the product so we still tend to think of the game as "perfect".
Re: What Writing and Selling Software Was Like in the 80s
#53I can really recommend Jordan Mechner's Karateka and Prince of Persia journals for a look into game development in the 80s. Every time I read one I come away energized with the same passion for creating something unique. Edit for link: http://jordanmechner.com/ebook/
When you mentioned Jordan Mechner, memories of me and my father playing Prince of Persia came into my mind :) It is arguably one of the best games ever!
Also a point that is to be noted is, back then every game developer was a kind of indie.
Re: What Writing and Selling Software Was Like in the 80s
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
Users value software that works. The driving forces behind featuritis have very little to do with what users want.
Users come up with feature requests all the time. Featuritis is exactly what the users ask for.
What users ask for is not necessarily what they want. A good designer listens to what users say, but doesn't follow them to the letter.
('Twas the night before Christmas variation on this topic: http://www.daclarke.org/Humour/sware-engr.html)
Re: What Writing and Selling Software Was Like in the 80s
#55windows 3.0 came out in 1990, not 1992
Re: What Writing and Selling Software Was Like in the 80s
#56I can really recommend Jordan Mechner's Karateka and Prince of Persia journals for a look into game development in the 80s. Every time I read one I come away energized with the same passion for creating something unique. Edit for link: http://jordanmechner.com/ebook/
Two more game development diaries, from Andrew Braybrook (the 'Carmack' of that time!), who wrote Paradroid and Morpheus for the C64:
Re: What Writing and Selling Software Was Like in the 80s
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
Users value software that works. The driving forces behind featuritis have very little to do with what users want.
Users come up with feature requests all the time. Featuritis is exactly what the users ask for.
They do, but they also want things simpler. Reconciling these conflicting demands is the trick.
Re: What Writing and Selling Software Was Like in the 80s
#58I remember typing programs in by hand from magazines. At that time, debugging meant tracking down your typing errors, not debugging actual code.
the "64er" magazine (from Germany) even had checksum programs when typing in programs by hand (one for Basic code and one for machine language).
So you could be pretty sure that your programs worked afterwards.
Nothing beat the feeling to type a program and then finding out that the game sucked.
But in one of the magazines there was a drum computer for the C64, which was pretty cool (forgot its name).
Re: What Writing and Selling Software Was Like in the 80s
#59I remember typing programs in by hand from magazines. At that time, debugging meant tracking down your typing errors, not debugging actual code.
the "64er" magazine (from Germany) even had checksum programs when typing in programs by hand (one for Basic code and one for machine language). So you could be pretty sure that your programs worked afterwards. Nothing beat the feeling to type a program and then finding out that the game sucked. But in one of the magazines there was a drum computer for the C64, which was pretty cool (forgot its name).
Yeah, I spent hours copying these programs to the computer. I remember one huge machine program listing (I think it was for a graphics program) that had a line with a wrong checksum printed. Without a correct checksum, you couldn't go on typing. So I changed one of the hex values until the line passed... The final program was kinda buggy but I never knew whether my change was responsible for one of the bugs or not.
Re: What Writing and Selling Software Was Like in the 80s
#60Shareware was a great increment from the publisher model. And then of course, AppStore is the real game changer.
I think internet was the real game changer. Once bandwidth got good enough for downloading software, it got easier to sell and patch anything. I can't imagine living 7-8 months without patches. AppStore is definitely a step up, but it may be too crowded.
What do you want the patches for? I wish I had fewer patches and fewer nagging notification items (Adobe, Java).
The internet drives the need for patches, because suddenly bugs are a security risk rather than a rare inconvenience.