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Discussion on: What are you "old enough to remember" in software development?

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Robert Myers

In no particular order:

  • Dozens of floppies to install a compiler (Hello Borland C)
  • VB (note lack of .Net)
  • Writing a DOS device driver so I could edit config.sys on bootup
  • Being at a dev conference where the presenter quickly wrote a C# program on the board "Oh, sorry, that's not C#, that's Java", changes the case of a few things "Now it's C#"
  • Turning on a computer with no storage and have it work (The Vic-20 and C-64 mentioned elsewhere here)
  • OS/2. Would've flunked college without this, I had neural nets running for weeks and could still write papers.
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Thomas H Jones II

Dozens of floppies to install a compiler (Hello Borland C)

Spending 20+ straight hours in the Sun lab to download Linux from MIT's TSX mirror ...then using rawrite to put it all on a stack of floppies. And, doing all that because the university's Sun lab was connected to NSFnet and its blazing 56Kbps "backbone".

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Danielle

My fav game back then, Sim Ant was installed from floppy!

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Robert Myers

I think I still have my SimEarth floppies somewhere.

I want to see someone join all the games together. Zoom into SimEarth, get SimCity. Zoom into SimCity, get SimTower or SimAnt depending on how built up the area was.

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Shari Norman

"Sim Ant" was a classic simulation game released by Maxis in 1991, allowing players to take control of an ant colony and guide it through various challenges and tasks. Back in the day, installing the game meant inserting floppy disks into your computer one by one until the installation process was complete. Each floppy disk contained a portion of the game's data, and you had to patiently swap them out as prompted by the installation wizard.