[HN Gopher] The Soul of an Old Machine
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       The Soul of an Old Machine
        
       Author : mskalski
       Score  : 74 points
       Date   : 2026-04-07 12:30 UTC (5 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (skalski.dev)
 (TXT) w3m dump (skalski.dev)
        
       | stackghost wrote:
       | I also have a few machines I'm attached to. When I was fresh out
       | of school I got a job at a startup writing PHP and bought myself
       | an (at the time) brand new Thinkpad X220 with a Sandy Bridge i7
       | inside.
       | 
       | My 9 year old has it now. The battery is toast but the machine
       | still faithfully trundles along. It plays Rollercoaster Tycoon on
       | Fedora Linux. We're building a robot together for her birthday,
       | so I'll be trying to install the Arduino tool chain on it.
       | 
       | I'll definitely miss that machine when it's no more.
        
         | ge96 wrote:
         | Lumia 920 for me, obsolete but I keep one around
        
         | assimpleaspossi wrote:
         | Hmm. The desktop I'm using right now has an i7 in it and I do
         | everything with it. Hmm.
        
           | stackghost wrote:
           | Not sure what your two "Hmm"'s are implying, but the i7 label
           | has been reapplied to newer chips as time goes on, which is
           | why I specified it was a Sandy Bridge-era chip.
        
           | wkjagt wrote:
           | Which generation? Just i7 by itself doesn't mean much. I
           | think the newest are like 14th generation? The X220 is only
           | 2nd generation ("Sandy Bridge"), about 15 years old.
        
             | assimpleaspossi wrote:
             | Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-3770 CPU @ 3.40GHz (3403.48-MHz
             | K8-class CPU). I think that's Ivy Bridge. I just don't pay
             | attention. I think it's a year newer with a smaller die.
        
       | dkdcdev wrote:
       | I still need to read "The Soul of a New Machine", should I save
       | this until after?
        
         | pulvinar wrote:
         | It's unrelated to the book, other than the title.
        
         | shon wrote:
         | Stop reading HN and read the book now. You're welcome. ;)
        
         | engineer_22 wrote:
         | Soul of a New machine is a great read, never slow or self-
         | gratifying, highly recommended
        
         | jnsaff2 wrote:
         | That's a great book to read, after that pick up The Cuckoo's
         | Egg.
        
         | JSR_FDED wrote:
         | Should be compulsory reading. Actually, now that I think about
         | it, this would make a great interview question in the AI era:
         | "what did you think of Soul of a new machine?"
        
           | abdulhaq wrote:
           | I found Showstopper! even more compelling
        
             | ghaff wrote:
             | Those two books are probably the two best about tech
             | projects I've ever read. I worked at Data General as a
             | product manager for about 13 years and know many of the
             | individuals although I joined a few years after the book
             | was written.
        
               | le-mark wrote:
               | What strikes me is the stories that never get told. I met
               | a retiree at a Java meetup once who had worked at Zilog
               | during the z8000 era. He was surprised to meet someone
               | who knew about that.
        
               | ghaff wrote:
               | Especially, pre-web and pre-blogs there's a great deal of
               | tech industry history that largely doesn't exist any
               | longer unless it was especially notable and/or some
               | author decided to spend a year or two writing about it.
        
             | JSR_FDED wrote:
             | Cool thanks for the recommendation!
        
         | dano wrote:
         | Honestly, when I read this book in 1982 or so it changed the
         | trajectory of my life and career. It is an story of a bet-the-
         | business project that occurred in real life. After reading I
         | though I was late to the tech party, missed out on so much, and
         | yet, here we are, 45 years later with incredible advancements
         | and a career I couldn't have imagined. Tracy Kidder was a gem
         | of an individual, just a wonderful person who was truly
         | interested in others. I hope you'll read the book soon.
        
       | jonhohle wrote:
       | I've held onto FireWire for long and feel attached to it. I've
       | used it for over 25 years.
       | 
       | I think I feel the same way about TiVo and fear the day the guide
       | stops updating or the motherboard fails (everything else in the
       | box is replaceable).
       | 
       | These things are ephemeral in the grand scheme of history, but
       | when they are embedded in workflows and habits for decades I find
       | it hard to let go.
        
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