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Comment by dijit | Hacker News Reader

I had a c64 and it was what made me fall in love with computers.

I tried my friends recently and it really did feel like a joy- it’s basically a toy now, impossible to use for anything meaningful (even IRC).

It’s hard to convey in text the “feeling” of immediacy and low input lag. I suppose it’s similar to how some gamers talk about fps, it feels immersive, like the machine is in-tune with you. It genuinely feels like something mechanical that you’re interacting with rather than something that “will get to it”.

It’s very subtle but it’s there.

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> impossible to use for anything meaningful

I would posit that our definition of 'meaningful' has dramatically changed since the C64 days. Nowadays, if you aren't doing it online or collaborating with someone, it's not considered 'meaningful.' Back in 1983, this was not the case.

I think a better comparison would be to do the things a C64 was good at on a modern computer with modern workflows, and see which is easier/faster/more satisfying. I'm talking word processing, gaming, printing, etc.

I bet the C64 wins.

(Side note: you can get that C64 online and onto IRC or a telnet-enabled BBS; there are plenty of products to do that)

It feels in tune until the moment you hit Return, generally. Then the machine has to do actual calculation, and you're reminded of the clock speeds you're dealing with.

Yes, I have very low latency while I type RUN EXCEL, but who cares when the floppy disk access that comes next takes 20 seconds?

Yeah but you still feel like the machine's working, right? you get this immediate crunching or a light blinking immediately.

I said that throughput is significantly worse, for sure.. but when I open a program theres about a second where it seems like my computers doing nothing at all..

Websites too, click a link and it seems like nothing until the page goes blank and starts rendering the new site.

Most laptops don't have harddisk indicators, all indication of work has gone away, and rendering it to the screen takes time- and isn't often followed anyway.

This is true. Apple, in particular, is aware of this; iOS has specific visual indicators designed in to make it look like the machine is doing work even when it's just loading state. It was one of the distinguishing factors between the iPhone and Android user experiences early on.

Floppies?? In our days, We had to make weird and loud sounds into the cassette recorder, and then see if what we made actually played alright. Took 'bout 5 whole minutes each LOAD "", unless someone took a breather, I'd wager!

You can certainly use a Commodore 64 for IRC and more:

https://github.com/oliverschmidt/contiki/wiki/C64

Whether it would be practical to do so is a different question.

I get that feeling when I switch out of X11 to a TTY.

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