So, I was chatting with a friend, and the topic came up that I was working on getting Windows 98 running in a virtual machine, with full features. But, the key question was this. “Why are you working with Windows 98 rather than something more moderm?”
So, I came about and drafted up a lot of text responses, and ultimately my final response was much shorter. But, for my own sake, here are the full details.
Ah, good question, but my answer must be even more tactful.
First of all, there are some things that really haven’t changed about computing from a user’s standpoint since the 1990s: general operating system architecture, C/C++ compilers, scripting languages, general GUI operation, basic web architecture, and so on. BUT, all of these things were accomplished using a fraction of the system resources we use to accomplish the same tasks today. So, in that sense, some of the things from the 1990s ARE modern, but they somehow manage to do so using a lot less system resources.
That’s one thing, I think, that can be impressive if you can understand it in detail: out of all the changes that happened between then and now, which ones were merely arbitrary, versus which ones were truly innovative and useful? Increasing the default stack sizes in your standard C libraries is a mundane change… you won’t get as many stack overflows, and it will still run okay on your more modern computers with beefier memory, but it is by no means a necessary change for ALL software. By contrast, re-architecting embedded software development workflow to better separate building the compiler from building the standard C library is a more compelling change: if it were more widely adopted back then, it would have had even more compelling productivity improvements back then than is the case today.
I think the really impressive thing about 1990s software and computing, though, is the cultural dimension. We had this period of time that was quite unique in the history of human society. In the middle of a booming U.S. economy, and rapidly developing Asian economies, we had computers that, very visibly, transitioned from beepy 8-bit machines to full spectrum audio and color graphics. How did simultaneous those changes affect those who were living and working in that time? There’s interesting things you can find everywhere. And, due to the technology wirlwind happening at the time, it does take a greater amount of effort to tap into seeing what was happening in tech at that time, compared to the early 1980s or 2000s… so you also have a curiously interesting puzzle to work on to visualize it in the modern era.
The tech world of the 1990s was definitely unusual. Today’s tech world (2000 to present) is more in the usual cycle of tech, being more closely mirrored with the pace of the early 1980s, 1970s, and maybe also earlier back to the 1950s. Although the tech of the 1990s is more similar to the tech of today, I personally find that the practical pace of innovative development today is more in line with that of the earlier decades. In some sense it is kind of interesting to think about this bigger picture… we have more engineers and better communications today than ever before, but challenges to reaching great innovation are getting even harder, so it all evens out to the pace of the earlier decades, where the challenges were easier, but the pace slower simply due to less engineers and slower communications tech.