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by gcb0 2708 days ago
your whole point is extremely backwards! software in 1985 was more "complete" than today. Even CD roms shipped with magazines had to support more windows variations than "good software" today supports of browsers! not to mention that every corporation with a software team also had usability and QA teams. Software quality and resiliency was much better than today. Then in the 90s it took a dive because online made "first to market wins", and it have been downhill from there.

so, your software concepts from 85 would be overkill today, not lacking.
2 comments
antt 2708 days ago
In 1985 you target one machine with one thread and one level of memory.

Today I'm working on systems with memory latencies from l0 cache all the way to tape storage. And it's getting worse.

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pjmlp 2708 days ago
Not when coding machines like the Amiga.
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zrobotics 2708 days ago
Agreed, and the games industry may be the clearest example of this. In 1985 the developers had to actually ship a finished game, there wasn't the opportunity to release a half-finished product and update it later. Compare to Fallout 76, which was very clearly unfinished at launch.

Edit:typo

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hopler 2708 days ago
Games in 1985 shipped with bugs baked in that people were just stuck with. Civilization had a broken Gandhi, and still shipped 4 different bugfix versions.
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zrobotics 2708 days ago
No game (or any large software project) is ever bug-free, but the standards were higher than they are now. Fallout 76 was literally unplayable on launch-a fairly early mainline quest was broken, so it wasn't possible to reach the endgame. Was civ unbeatable on release? Sure, ghandi was bugged, but that was entertaining enough they kept the bug in the sequels.
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dtech 2708 days ago
There were plenty of bad and buggy games in the 80's, it even crashed the market [1]. We just don't remember them.

Also modern non-indie games are orders of magnitude larger and intricate than 80's games, and have about the same distrubution of quality/bugs. They're now made by teams of size 10-1000 rather than 1-10 though.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_game_crash_of_1983

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dmd 2708 days ago
Neither Civilization nor Windows existed in 1985.
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icedchai 2708 days ago
Take a guess when Windows 1.0 was released.
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dmd 2708 days ago
> "software in 1985 was more "complete" than today. Even CD roms shipped with magazines had to support more windows variations than "good software"

There was one variation of Windows in 1985. (And I remember installing it!)

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icedchai 2708 days ago
Yes, but in your previous comment, you said it didn't exist. It may as well not have! Almost nobody used Windows 1.0...

Still, in 1985, even DOS apps had to target varied environments: mono, CGA, EGA, Tandy graphics, different memory configurations, 8088 or 286, printer drivers...

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hnzix 2708 days ago
The anecdote is they deliberately left in nuclear Gandhi for the lulz.
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