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Comment by civilized | Hacker News Reader

It's an interesting perspective but ultimately unsatisfying because it doesn't touch on basic questions it seems like anyone would think to ask.

For example: from a hardware perspective, today's "microcomputer" hardware is vastly more powerful than the mainframes of old, is it not? The time when it was much less powerful was long ago. If the old philosophy is so vastly superior, what's stopping folks from recreating it in today's computing ecosystem?

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The article is comparing systems from the same or close time periods. To merely compare modern systems with systems from 30+ years ago ignores what happened in those 30 years, which is why your comment says so little.

It's also trying to suggest that that history explains the dominant computing paradigms today. I think that historically-driven thinking only goes so far when today's hardware is vastly more powerful than anything we used to have. Any paradigm that serves users better could be used on today's very capable hardware, and presumably it would be extremely attractive. So why does this article sound like moving to the old paradigm that it prefers is a lost cause? We're not at the end of history quite yet.

Well, in my opinion, inertia is a dominant factor. There is an enormous amount of inertia present in the current systems and thought patterns. Redesigning the world from scratch while applying different principles is hard, especially when you need to catch up with 30 years of evolution and situational developments.

The point of the article, I believe, is that the current set of principles underlying modern systems are not necessarily sacred and immutable. It does not follow that applying differing principles to today’s ecosystems, where current principles have metastasized, would be easy or even necessarily achievable.

I kindof think that’s what private cloud is: mainframe-style workflows and architectures on (many) microcomputers.

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