[Aperocky]

Imagine the systems that they worked with.

In the 1970s, dealing with primitive electronic systems, often without screen and most definitely without a full OS.

Goosebumps. To imagine that the tech phenomenon that we can only regard as recent (2000-) but there are people from as far as 30 years back before that, working on things that have lasting impact to us.

I recently read bwk's Unix history and memoir, it's a great read, to see many of these pioneers being old and passed away is a great sadness.

[pvg]

You're making it sound like the Voyager software and hardware was developed by poking soft clay tablets with a pointy reed. The systems had OS's, screens were surely available, ICs and high-level languages were in use. The '[computer-ish] tech phenomenon' itself is a fair bit older - 'Silicon Valley' is named after literal, not figurative silicon-based electronic components.