I wonder if it would blow modern people's minds the extent to which a standard 1980s experience was "Oh, you got a computer?

[peterb@mathstodon.xyz]

I wonder if it would blow modern people's minds the extent to which a standard 1980s experience was "Oh, you got a computer? Here's a huge box of pirated software, give it back after you've copied it."

[zarfeblong@mastodon.gamedev.place]

@peterb Same degree as “the machine doesn’t come with a single text editor installed and a word processor app costs $160 in 2026 dollars.”

[nelson@tech.lgbt]

@zarfeblong @peterb but there's a mini-assembler built in right in the ROM!

[peterb@mathstodon.xyz]

@nelson @zarfeblong Every time I think of "CALL -151" or "3D0G" I'm angry all over again that my neurons are still spent on remembering it.

[zeank@mastodon.social]

@peterb @Gurre my little town’s electronics store had a catalogue of software in the public domain and you could just borrow diskettes with those on it for little money.

[funkula@goblin.camp]

@peterb my town's librarian was just like "here's a cool educational game, here's a Xerox of the copy protection page from the manual"

[anke@social.scribblers.club]

@peterb I blew a younger colleague's mind last week by telling him that downloading a not-great-quality mp3 took like 15 minutes, and the Windows installer was ~13 MB and came on 9 disks... (obviously later than 80s, but still, it was funny)

[cks@mastodon.social]

@peterb @gnomon My theory about what is perhaps my most successful program ever is that it became so successful partly because it let people pretend that they weren't pirating the software that made it unnecessary.

(I only found out about its success years and years after the fact. Someday I will write the full story for my techblog.)