Ask HN: Does retro computing make you feel younger or older?
Does it matter whether you are doing retro gaming or retro programming?
- People doing this for their kids so the kids can use the software of their parent's youth (my own motivation that led me to fall into this [1])
- People doing this for work (still using old music production software for example)
- People doing this because they care about historical software (had a couple museum curators buy one)
- People who are tinkerers but want to tinker with software not hardware so they buy from me
- Retro gamers
In all of these cases I don't think it's really about feeling old or young. It's just about doing something that they perceive as better than they can achieve on a modern machine. And by "better" I mean better to them. Not objectively better. They just love those games from the 90s. Or they just think that the educational software back then was less addictive/better for their kids than the software today.
Sure, if we think about anything from our distant past it can make us feel old. But I think it's more that this hobby (or work) actually serves a purpose for these customers and they don't think along the old/young axis.
0: https://os9.shop 1: https://x.com/davekopec/status/1780032912768770448
https://obsolescence.dev/obsolescence-newsletter-dec-2024.ht...
Now excuse me, I need to go chase some whippersnappers off of my lawn.
The difference between machines in the 2000s and 1980s is much, much larger than the difference between machines now and machines in the 2000s, though, making the "retro" timeline nonlinear.
The Mini is a great compact hardware platform to run them on. I have four minis that run various Mac OS generations.
Remembering things you had great fun with or found meaningful a long time ago is nostalgia.
It was a lot of fun. It brought back old memories of us in our late teens in the 1980s, when we used to meet up regularly for "copy parties" and demo coding parties. I would absolutely do it again. We had a great time looking at old and new demos while the 1541 whirred in the background. There's still so much going on with the Commodore 64, people are still pushing it past its known limits (See https://www.pouet.net/prodlist.php?platform%5B%5D=Commodore+... ).
I bought one! When I got home, I was thinking - wow, it's been awhile since making a bootable linux USB drive. After figuring that out, the computer booted nicely into Debian, install was easy, but it brought back all these memories from college (at that time, I was using Mandrake and Gentoo - also on a Dell!).
My mind - full of ideas & possibilities, have been plugging random things into it to see what works - Logitech 3D Extreme flight stick: Yes! Yamaha keyboard - let's see!
I'm now on a journey to figure out how to get the sound system to work at root-level (so that 'cron' can play audio when a user's not logged in)
The whole point of the comment is that (1) this is so much fun, (2) Feels surprisingly good to be in open-source labd and not in MacOS world, (3) Debian Linux feels like a sturdy workhorse tool (4) Exploring the creative possibilities of open source tooling (and having patience for their user interfaces). For example, Inkscape, Blender 3D, music production.
Note: Even Steam worked, and the first game I installed (Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime) worked on the first try (!).
If you're in end-of-year tinker mode, consider picking up a used "mini computer" ("mini" is relative!) - slapping Linux on it, and making something cool.
No judgment on a personal level, they have lovely games, of course, and it sounds like a nice ending - but there's so many wonderful games to try inside of the "open-source" realm! Here's a list I was perusing the other day, being quite amazed at all the stuff that was there:
https://www.slant.co/topics/1933/~best-open-source-games
Ones that caught my eye were endless sky, teeworlds, hedgewars, but there are actually loads.
Thanks for bearing with the whiplash - my usual approach with open-source is that I try to figure out what the absolute best commercially-available tool is to solve a problem, then I go find out the best open-source equivalent and invest in that for the long term. Recent example (in speech synthesis): I'm prototyping with ElevenLabs (commercial/proprietary), and then investing in PiperTTS (open-source).
OpenRA looks very cool! Added to the list! I'm only picking games back up myself, last I was hard at it was the PS2 a couple of decades ago nearly now. So I could only tell you what an internet search would tell you, i.e.,
https://alternativeto.net/category/games/space-game/?license...
https://github.com/akarnokd/open-ig
I did try Endless Sky recently though, and haven't gotten into the meat of the gameplay, but an hour in, and I think I like where it's going. More space trading, but the storyline is cool, and I like the feel of it.
Otherwise, maybe a bit left field, but perhaps something like
http://discworld.starturtle.net/lpc/
Have yet to try it, but a thread on here about MUDs that I found had a few people who swore by it, so I was very tempted! Terry Pratchett is great, so I imagine the MUD could be very, very fun to get lost in (plus I've discovered MUDs exist, and want to try one).
I moved to Linux (Ubuntu first, then tons of distro-hopping, etc etc). I look at what's available in the repositories, and allow that to frame my universe. You don't miss what you don't know.
So there's a chance I could be missing some wonderful stuff, sure. However, I've found a solution for everything I've needed at every stage of the past 4 odd years. My understanding has skyrocketed, no real expertise but tons of little things I was terrified of before now seem standard to me, and I feel that exploring terminals and operating systems and text editors and so on has been a big part of that.
Documentation and tutorials and all on that side of the "tech world" seem just lovely, and like they're not trying to trick me into anything. Going "open-source-first-and-only", with extremely rare exceptions if I absolutely must, was the key for me there.
I understand how not everyone's personal and professional situation permits them to do that though, just sharing my perspective :)
While we can learn from them and their inventors/creators, if we choose, I'm much happier with my rock solid highly reliable five year old RAM and my new MacBook Pro. I've driven a lot of the Jeeps ever made, and off-road I'll take my JKU Rubicon over any of them (except maybe the 2004 "LJ") any day. It's a beast to maintain mostly because I am beastly to it, and the older ones are worse for that.
I don’t rush after the newest and shiniest (my M3 replaced a 2013 Air), but when it's time, the RAM and JKU will be replaced with new.
So now that I can have a few of them, every time I get one I feel like a kid.
Not that I buy them by the dozens or I'm becoming a collector, that's something I can't do nor want to do, but getting something new (old, but new to me) once a year or every couple allows me to discover all that I missed. Since I'm not "re"discovering it, it's all new to me in a sense.
Now I'm curious about how others see it. I work with several people who are younger than computers I actively use for testing, and I just pointed out an article on The Register (1) because it talks about the same machine I use for email server load testing, which is a Macintosh LC III+ (2). I wonder what the youngsters think about that, so I think I'll ask :)
1) https://www.theregister.com/2024/12/02/apples_design_reverse...
People will glorify retro stuff but if you say you're using OpenGL 2 to support cheap hardware they ask why you don't use 4 and some new high-end feature
There's a valley where something is old enough to be uncool but not old enough to be cool again
It suggests that systems or games from the past are somehow by definition less good. And that one would have to have a "hobby" or "interest" to possibly want to spend time with them. That the experience is somehow lesser.
The quietly radical thought I've been entertaining recently is that maybe "retro-computing" people have more of a right to be considered computer enthusiasts than the usual crowd you'd associate with that category, and similarly, maybe "retro-gamers" are more "gamer" than the "gamers" themselves.
Picture the two archetypes - the person who regularly investigates the near-infinite cave of treasures which is all the games humanity has produced the last 50 years (as well as sometimes some of the more modern games), or someone who plays exclusively "AAA-rated" games released the previous year, who never ventures outside of the ps or xbox store, who owns a ton of skins, and follows a few YTers who talk about games?
Who is more of an "enthusiast"? Whose fondness and engagement is more open-minded, fresher, "younger"? Who knows more? Who has more respect for the games, the developers, the hardware and software world?
The big difference/problem I think is the social aspect. With AAA at least you can expect large numbers of people enjoying them at the same time, so you can share the experience with others (and even then, good luck finding anyone IRL to relate to if you're 35+). People tend to be social creatures, and are largely driven by what 'everyone else' is doing. It's amazing how peoples' tastes miraculously change depending on what their peer group is at.
But if you discover some gem of a game from 1997? You will unfortunately likely feel quite alone playing it.
I don't really have an answer to this. I somewhat envy the game streamers that have a small community around them, so they can play some old game live and get the experience of enjoying it with others.
I've got a VAX/VMS 7.3 System that runs in my cheap ass android phone thanks to SimH. I can even telnet into it. ;-)
It's also a good reminder of the era of actually secure computing, and the most secure computer ever, an IBM PC XT with no hard drive ... but that's a rant for another thread.
Few years ago one day I discovered retropie and decided to install it. Was a bit of a rabbit hole for me but in a good way, reminded me when I first installed Linux when it was still on multiple floppy disks.
And it was quite cool that my son discovered Duke Nukem 3d or Mortal Kombat that I played with my cousins in my youth.
Retro gaming is a necessity: modern games, like most modern software, are too good at manipulating the player's psychology and I certainly won't let my kids play free-to-play crap or let them on social media.
For myself: I genuinely like old games more than modern (with a few exceptions, eg. Balatro comes to mind)
I don't see a lot of appeal for retro programming; sure, dependency hell was not a problem in the past and tooling was simpler, but modern stacks have a series of productivity multipliers. You need to be careful in selecting the right technologies - but after that you are literally flying compared to old SDKs.
I keep a set of emulated machines that can boot me back into these environments, I click around, play a game for a few minutes, maybe code game of life or a maze solver in C, and then go … “Ha! Those were the days” and then go back to my 4k 120Hz waaaaaay more advanced IDE and say “phew it good to be back, this is way better”
It doesn’t make me feel old or young, but I enjoy the stroll down memory lane every 4-5 months.
It's when I start to think about dates, that it makes me feel old.
I was tempted to open it and see if I could install it on an old computer, but realized I no longer had one with a 3.5 inch floppy drive.
System requirements on the side of the box: Intel 386 SX compatible computer 4.0MB of memory minimum (6.0MB recommended) - yes that is Megabytes! The 3.5 inch floppy drive A mouse or compatible pointing device.
Brings back memories...
Retro computer programming satisfies two of my needs:
1. Low level programming in C and assembly. I can definitely do the same in modern boxes but it helps a lot to reduce complexity.
2. To help with my interest in RE. The idea is to get familiar with many architectures so RE an unknown one is not a rocket science.
It's amazing to realize that much of the key insights and abilities of computing can be experienced on an 8 bit CPU with less RAM than the L1 cache of today's processors. A 32bit CPU like the 68030 running System 7 and some applications is 95% of the same stuff we do today.
The hardware of "back in the day" is much more accessible and enjoyable to work with than modern computers.
There is the video that mocks mongodb because it returns success before the data is persisted. Try writing your data to a cassette tape ;)
Kids enjoy 1980s and 1990s computer tech. I briefly like the nostalgia but that's it.
We drive cars older than me. We enjoy their simplicity.
Anything before that makes me younger, in a look at the neat things the old people used to use.
retro computing doesnt make me feel either older or younger, it makes me appreciate how far computing has come in my lifetime.
Today, I am that older guy seemingly doing the same and old thing everyday as younger guys roll their eyes at me.
I'm getting too old for this.
I also despise forced anachronistic "retro" graphics "aesthetic" and I'll never again play new games that feature overly blocky "pixel art". I've had enough of that in my childhood, it's ugly, almost always uninspired and lazy, and I really don't want to see it anymore.
I guess in some ways it makes me feel older when I talk about this with friends whom are younger and have missed the N64 generation, for example. But I don’t mind, I will embrace the “old man yells at clouds” when the time comes.