Comment by unclesams-uncle | Hacker News Reader

Comment by unclesams-uncle | Hacker News Reader

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unclesams-uncle

A close relative of mine swears by WP 5.1 and running as many programs as he can from the command line.

He also:

- Refuses to upgrade to Windows 10 (he's trying desperately to stay on XP for as long as he can, although I think either 98 or even 3.1 is his favorite. He has, however, made peace with Windows 7)

- Will buy out-of-date but refurbished laptops to achieve this goal.

- Prefers obscure browsers over Chrome, IE/Edge and even Firefox.

- Will actively block JS from loading in browser. It makes for a 'unique' browsing experience.

As a result, I get the impression that he's created some sort of high-end IT security policy in the sense that no nefarious hacker would bother even looking for hardware and software that obsolete and obscure.

He's in his mid 70s. I've tried to get him to migrate to a lighter-weight Linux distro running XFCE or MATE but he seems adamant on sticking to his guns. I kind of respect that dedication, even with the mind-boggling frustration it comes with.

> I kind of respect that dedication, even with the mind-boggling frustration it comes with.

I dunno. I get the "respect the dedication" thing, but at some point this person is so afraid of change that they'd rather become a burden to others who have to deal with them rather than adapt to a changing world. At least for developers, part of the job description is to actually make an effort to learn and use new things.

I've worked with a number of these people, where whenever you introduce a concept that they haven't worked with for 25 years (e.g. a new VCS, a new/upgraded programming language, a new way of building, a new framework, even minor changes to code they wrote 15 years ago, really anything), they become incredibly resistant and intransigent, and they make change significantly harder than it needs to be.

People who are adaptable are forced to work with their ancient (and not always better) systems, because it's the path of least resistance. These kinds of people can be a real problem.

But it makes sense to be resistant - you're trying to change something that they perceive to have worked for 25 years (or whatever). I bet that if they perceive that something to not work they'd accept that fix, but despite what some will say, more often than not if something isn't broken then it is a bad idea to try and fix it.

Part of gaining experience over the years is also gaining the experience that people often want to mess things that work (often with good intentions) and end up making things worse.

The rest of us have mostly given up trying to troubleshoot his IT issues. For his part, he recognizes that he's on his own and will take the time to (try to) fix whatever issues he has.

Interestingly to you point, I've worked in banking for a number of years. The number of institutions that depend on legacy systems coded in otherwise extinct languages is concerning.

On the other hand, I've met some of the consultants banks use for IT maintenance. These guys (mostly in their 50s) can easily earn 40K a month (in Europe!) just for knowing COBOL and late 70s/early 80s era infrastructure.

I just got back from an acquaintance with an old core 2 era celeron running windows 7. No GPU, no SSD. The thing flies I was shocked. Seriously shocked.

> Will actively block JS from loading in browser. It makes for a 'unique' browsing experience

It is unique in the sense that it has far fewer crappy paywalls, cookie consent windows, annoying "sign up to our mailing list" spam, tracking scripts, adverts, cryptocurrency miners, and pointless shit nobody cares about. Less RAM usage too.

With NoScript, turn off JS for most sites, then make exceptions for the sites that need it. Generally, it is a much better experience.

I was thinking that. And I guess, considering that his machines don't have a lot of RAM in them, blocking JS is a lot more resource-effective than running a bunch of browser plugins to achieve the same results.

WP 5.1 was the best version. If I could use it, I would. Most of us don't need a lot of bells and whistles in a word processor.

Might be to his benefit to install Virtualbox. He can load whatever Windows he wants then. Prob DOS as well. Or CP/M.

DOS and pre-2000 Windows aren't supported very well on VMs, especially if you are on a laptop as they tend to hog an entire CPU core at all times. Not to mention the lack of drivers.

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