I'm too young to have been aware of this part of computing history as it happened. But I did at one point go back to run photoshop 2 under emulation just to get a feel for its abilities. The amazing thing is that provided you understood the underlying mechanics of how effects like drop shadows or smoke halo's are done you could do them in photoshop 2 (and I assume version 1 as well). Instead of layers, which version 2 did not have, you would just put each "layer" in a separate image and then periodically combine them all in the right order into a target image through the filter effects. You could do reasonably modern effects on machines whose speeds were measured in mhz, not ghz.
I often think about how incredibly inefficient modern software is given that we've had roughly the same level of productivity software ability (with varying levels of usability) for a few decades now. I distinctly remember my NT4 system of the late 90's, and how it was roughly as productive as my current machine, and I wonder just how much cruft is inside modern operating systems and applications.
> I often think about how incredibly inefficient modern software is given that we've had roughly the same level of productivity software ability (with varying levels of usability) for a few decades now. I distinctly remember my NT4 system of the late 90's, and how it was roughly as productive as my current machine, and I wonder just how much cruft is inside modern operating systems and applications.
As a fellow young person (probably even younger than you), I remember watching this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vPnehDhGa14 two years ago when it came out and I remember gaining quite an appreciation for all the work put in over time in Windows and the complexity that it probably brings.
When the spreadsheet software was first brought to market, it produced an order of magnitude improvement in ability to do accounting and calculations with the computer. When digital photography tools like photoshop were introduced, they produced an order of magnitude improvement in ability to do image editing. You can go down the line of categories of software, and pinpoint a rough spot where the order of magnitude jump was made.
We've stopped jumping in the productivity software category. There are no order of magnitude improvements in productivity software. Each year's software release is the equivalent of city sprawl in urban planning. It grows bigger, and contains more, but it doesn't fundamentally improve the "capability".
There are still huge leaps being made in software, but not on the desktop.
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I'm too young to have been aware of this part of computing history as it happened. But I did at one point go back to run photoshop 2 under emulation just to get a feel for its abilities. The amazing thing is that provided you understood the underlying mechanics of how effects like drop shadows or smoke halo's are done you could do them in photoshop 2 (and I assume version 1 as well). Instead of layers, which version 2 did not have, you would just put each "layer" in a separate image and then periodically combine them all in the right order into a target image through the filter effects. You could do reasonably modern effects on machines whose speeds were measured in mhz, not ghz.
I often think about how incredibly inefficient modern software is given that we've had roughly the same level of productivity software ability (with varying levels of usability) for a few decades now. I distinctly remember my NT4 system of the late 90's, and how it was roughly as productive as my current machine, and I wonder just how much cruft is inside modern operating systems and applications.
> I often think about how incredibly inefficient modern software is given that we've had roughly the same level of productivity software ability (with varying levels of usability) for a few decades now. I distinctly remember my NT4 system of the late 90's, and how it was roughly as productive as my current machine, and I wonder just how much cruft is inside modern operating systems and applications.
As a fellow young person (probably even younger than you), I remember watching this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vPnehDhGa14 two years ago when it came out and I remember gaining quite an appreciation for all the work put in over time in Windows and the complexity that it probably brings.
Could you elaborate what you mean by "the same level of productivity software ability"?
What I mean is this:
When the spreadsheet software was first brought to market, it produced an order of magnitude improvement in ability to do accounting and calculations with the computer. When digital photography tools like photoshop were introduced, they produced an order of magnitude improvement in ability to do image editing. You can go down the line of categories of software, and pinpoint a rough spot where the order of magnitude jump was made.
We've stopped jumping in the productivity software category. There are no order of magnitude improvements in productivity software. Each year's software release is the equivalent of city sprawl in urban planning. It grows bigger, and contains more, but it doesn't fundamentally improve the "capability".
There are still huge leaps being made in software, but not on the desktop.