Hacker News Reader

Comment by cc101 | Hacker News Reader

I remember when the Commodore 64 came out. "64K RAM?", I thought, "What could anyone do with so much RAM?" Power to do something new always generates new things to do with it.

View on HN

You're only following the winners, but computer science has also had a lot of flops, too. Time will tell if quantum computers is one of those, but it sure isn't looking great so far.

At that time QL Sinclair was a loser. A good computer that never got programs. It was the computer of Lius Torwalds and the reason he had to write himself programs. Without QL Sinclair, we may never had Linux.

At my work, I was present when the research on ASAS (https://skybrary.aero/articles/airborne-separation-assurance...) led to the idea of PMS (https://www.eurocontrol.int/sites/default/files/2021-05/euro...).

Never underestimate serendipity

While that's a neat story, I'm not sure if it has a lot to do with the practical applicability of quantum computing. I didn't mean to single out Commodore or their CBM64, I really mean to say that there are plenty of examples of entire technologies that were hyped and then flopped, not just market competitors in a given technology that is already mostly proven.

> we may never [have] had Linux.

Oh, come on. Linux was a clone of MINIX with a GPL license. If Linus had not written it, somebody else would have; and at worst (if that is worse), we would have all been running FreeBSD now.

Or maybe someone would have come up with something that wasn't Unix clone... Maybe our computing would be in better shape.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com