Two Stop Bits | DaOne256's comments

DaOne256 87 days ago | parent | on: Why fastDOOM is fast
Lots of interesting comments here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43258709
DaOne256 87 days ago | parent | on: NetBSD on a JavaStation
Interesting comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43262188
- KODust 87 days ago
  The two things that stunted Java from a creative-projects perspective were (a) nobody built a native (x86 / PowerPC / etc) compiler for it early on and (b) the UI class library was utter garbage.
  (a) People got way too enamored with the runtime possibilities and didn't see the opportunity to replace C++ -- by the mid-90's the serious C++ footguns were certainly widely recognized -- with a better language.
  (b) I still don't know why anyone at Sun thought AWT was acceptable. They literally bought a superior class library from another company and threw it away. And every attempt to fix it became this endless parade of crap grafted on top of AWT.
  - bmonkey325 86 days ago
    AWT known with affection as the Awful Window Toolkit.
  - DaOne256 87 days ago
    (a) I always thought that was unfortunate. Java would have been the perfect successor to C++ with its pleasant syntax and its powerful standard libraries. Perhaps it would have been a good option to disable the garbage collector to avoid performance bottlenecks and interruptions. Or maybe the successor could have been D.
    (b) Interesting, can you tell us more about what this UI library was that Sun bought?
    - KODust 86 days ago
      My memory was that Lighthouse Design had a framework, but this reference says it was _both_ Netscape and Lighthouse Design. There's probably a better history somewhere, but this is the best I can currently find.
      https://java.fandom.com/wiki/Swing
DaOne256 105 days ago | parent | on: Quake II for MS-DOS
Lot's of interesting DOS comments and links on the orange site: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43054963
DaOne256 248 days ago | parent | on: Mkfs.fat on Linux vs. OS/2 2.1
Some important additional comments on the orange site: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41610995
DaOne256 351 days ago | parent | on: Everything You Can Do to Keep an Old Computer Runn...
https://archive.ph/TF7H5
- bmonkey325 350 days ago
  Excellent. Thank you. A skill I wish I had to post from archive
DaOne256 383 days ago | parent | on: PicoMEM by FreddyV - All in One 8-Bit ISA Expansio...
Comments on the orange site: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40339723
DaOne256 482 days ago | parent | on: DOS Subsystem for Linux
It follows the Microsoft naming scheme, the WSL on Windows 10/11 is the "Windows Subsystem for Linux".
DaOne256 517 days ago | parent | on: The IDEs we had 30 years ago... and we lost
There are lots of great comments on this topic on the orange site: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38792446
DaOne256 528 days ago | parent | on: Bit Banging a 3.5" Floppy Drive
Comments from the orange site: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38699201
DaOne256 539 days ago | parent | on: Five-Disk Floppy RAID: 4MB of Blistering Fast Stor...
https://archive.ph/Hos3u