A computer in the 70s/80s was a serious expense, similar to buying a nice used car, or a year of state college.
My folks bought me an Apple ][ around 1980. $2500 bought : 1mhz, 48k of ram, 1 floppy drive, a 9" Sanyo monochrome monitor, and what seemed like an endless universe of possibilities. The next six years were a blur of Assembly (Lazer Systems Interactive Compiler), and Applesoft Basic, trying to unlock the secrets of that machine and write my own games. It was magic! I am 100% certain that $2500 investment by my folks is the reason I have had a career in software.
I remember riding a 10-speed bike downtown to Computerland to buy an individual floppy disc @ $5/each. The university bookstore only sold Gorilla brand, and they were around $7 each.
Imagine the joy when I learned to use a scissors (later, a nibbler tool) to cut a notch out of floppy case so I could use both sides. Like finding free money!
Now a RaspPi Zero is $5 and information is limitless. This is a gilded age.
That is quite possibly the biggest understatement in the history of humanity. And it's not just because computer hardware has become essentially free. When I was a kid, to get any kind of information meant waiting for the daily newspaper to be delivered, or a trip to the library, or, if you were lucky, pulling out a volume from the encyclopedia on the book shelf (another very pricey commodity in those days). It still boggles my mind that you can buy a full-featured Gnu/Linux server for the price of a hamburger, and Wikipedia is literally free. It's a freakin' miracle.
My parents bought a Commodore 64 when I was a kid and I loved the thing, but I've come to realize over the years that I knew almost nothing about it as a kid. I had never even heard of PEEK/POKE and if it wasn't in the (admittedly pretty good) manual then there was basically no chance that I would. I remember the manual briefly touched on the sprite generator, but not in enough detail that a kid who only knows BASIC could use it. It never even mentioned the SID sound chip. The only "computer" books my library had were talking about CDC machines and IBM mainframes, or extremely general discussions about core memory and them fancy new transistor things. I think they might have had some programming language books too, but since I didn't have any compilers they were useless. This was in the 80s.
Today's kids can get in depth information on almost anything, and have ways of talking with experts if they get stuck. I'm excited to see how they turn out.
This is the one: http://www.retrogamingworld.co.uk/images/thumbnails/350/525/...
As a kid I didn't really understand much of it, I remember making a simple sprite move around the screen, and designing my own sprite using the grid example it gave.
However looking back at the manual now, it's amazing how much detail it goes into, from sprite positioning, sprite expansion, drawing multiple sprites ( all via POKE and PEEK) to programming the SID chip (one whole chapter on this).
It doesn't deal with handling sprite collision though, so you would struggle to make a game I suppose. But the manual is surprisingly in depth. It does mention that for more advanced topics you would need the "C64 programmers reference guide".
Edit: found it. Somehow different, but that's the closest to what I remember: http://www.defence-force.org/computing/oric/library/lib_manu... Chapter 10 and Appendixes were invaluable.
> Today's kids can get in depth information on almost anything
OTOH, in the 80's, CPU instruction sets were tractable, and writing machine code was in the realm of possibilities for kids (I should know, I did it ; it was loads of fun).
I remember as a 16yo trying to buy my first car (used 1979 Camaro) and how I thought knowing about the NADA guide you could browse through at the library was secret knowledge and used the copied page as negotiations tool. Now that info and more is readily available in few clicks on your portable phone/computer you carry in you pocket when at the dealer.
"What is the main export of Bolivia?"
My high school acquired a Business Basic 4 computer my senior year. The math teacher decided to teach a BASIC programming class, where we'd use a punch card machine to write our programs, give the card decks to him, and he'd run them. He wouldn't let any of us touch the computer, or even be in the same room with it.
My most advanced program was a quadratic equation solver, just a few lines of BASIC. (The class was more or less a joke.)
But when I got to Caltech a year later, they gave all students an account on a DECSystem 10 timesharing system, and everything went downhill for me after that. I'd go to class in the day, and spent all night in the computer center playing with it.
It was such a strange time because of all of the different form factors and sizes. I had a DOS computer that looked like a metal waste bin with a monitor embedded. The keyboard would clip onto the monitor: "Portable" The Apple II, Atari 1200XL, and Commie were all short lived, as they are not 'business computers'. There were also countless 'bubble pop' keyboard computers that I only remember because of the feeling of pressing on the keys. The standard IBM Personal Computer XT was my sole computer until the 486 era. The lack of EGA/VGA in that time meant that I increasingly wandered onto BBS systems until I found several that actually had Internet access by syncing with the University. I had two email address in 1986. It took me about a year to discover the difference between electronic mail on the bulletin board that I was used to and e-mail. As for modems, the jump from the TRS-80 Direct-Connect Modem on page 12 of the catalog that connected at 300bps to a 2400bps internal modem on the XT was mind blowing.
I also remember being disgusted by GW-BASIC and being on a programming bulletin board called McAffee's. It was so frustrating because I did not have access to a C compiler and was crushed to find out from the SysOp how much it cost back then. When I finally managed to get a pirated version of Borland Turbo C, I was ecstatic.
Spending $3000 on a computer in 1980 is the equivalent of spending $9,000 today.
Like you said, you could get a really nice used car for that.
http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=3000&year1=1980...
Sums up the situation nicely.
> my mom was a homemaker (is that still PC?)
That fully loaded Macbook Pro will be outdated before the ink of the advert is properly dried.
It's a huge difference if you can deprecate an investment over a large number of years or if you're expected to buy something new every one or two years.
Tablets and phones are even worse when it comes to aging.
In contrast, we have a 2009 MacBook Pro. Still works just fine for web browsing, word processing and things of that nature. Mobile phone hardware is moving super fast as desktop computers were in the '80s, but I think that the improvements in desktop (well, laptop is the equivalent today) hardware are less important for most people.
But if you had stuck with the CP/M world you would have been able to run that old hardware for many years more.
Note how you have relegated your 2009 MacBook Pro to 'web browsing, words processing and things of that nature', whereas as a developers machine it is likely quite underpowered.
We are also at the end of the easy pickings from Moore's law so this too means that machine replacement pace is now (fortunately) finally dropping off a bit.
But phones and tablets are basically an exercise in planned obsolescence and computers while they last a bit longer than in the past are still being replaced quite frequently. Your MacBook Pro is on it's 'second life', no longer in use for its primary purpose.
I think that software developers and computer enthusiasts back then wanted to upgrade as often as they would now (though I might still argue that even for developers the pace is less today than it was back then). For your "average office worker" or "average home computer user", I'm guessing that their computer will serve them well for longer today with less clear incentive for upgrading.
I mentioned the web browser, word processing and such because those are things that many non-developers commonly do with computers. That 2009 MacBook Pro would likely continue to serve a non-developer just fine and the only reason they might consider upgrading is that Mac OS Sierra doesn't support it.
In short, I think desktop/laptop machine replacement pace started dropping off for most people years ago. In the 80s the performance and storage improvements were way more meaningful than they are for many people than any time recently.
I was a software developer back then and the pace was measurably slower. Development tools would be static for years between upgrades too.
But- I see your point. I have a 2013 MBP as my developer machine and it's being replaced the day the new one comes out.
Biggest problem I see is that we're continuing the trend of specialized hardware and specialized software for that hardware. I can't run current ios software on an iphone 4 - it might be possible for people to write software for it, but they can't distribute it. Possibly similar for android - haven't done as much dev there.
When I wrote for c64, I didn't have to worry about what version of stuff people had - they had a c64, same in 1983 as it was in 1990 - an entire 7 years, and new code would work on old systems. We're increasingly moving away from that. :/
1) thanks to Jay Miner and company had better graphics and sound than the Apple ][
I attribute a large part to my mom, basically no questions asked, in getting me that first PC to my whole career in IT. As well as a tinkerer of tech stuff and still prefer fixing electronic stuff and building my own PC from parts than buying name brand ones. I'm 43.
I need to tell her thanks again next time I see her for basically taking a $9k loan out (in today's $$) for her 10yo son for this gadget computer stuff that was starting to take off that no one else in our circle of friends really even knew much about.
That makes a much stronger impression of how much cheaper hardware has become, as well as more capable.