You know what I miss?
Java threads. Seriously. Programming a nice threaded architecture in Java was like herding animals. You inject them with some intelligence, make it probabalistic, put some randomness in and allow for inter-thread communication (so they can keep up on progress) and BOOM: you had a zoo that worked to solve a problem. Unleash threads in a competitive environment and not only did they cooperate (if programmed right), but it was damn fast. I’m still proud of my data-base worker-thread algorithm which used a railroad car metaphor to schedule asynchronous DB writes/reads. It made it so a very lean MySQL backend could support a 10,000 thread graph structure.
What do you miss? Is it quite as nerdy as what I miss?
Not nearly as nerdy. I miss PointCast, it was so much better than the weak RSS feeds screensaver that comes on OS X.
OK, I was young and naive when it came to information design, but it was a richer experience than what is currently available. I miss Palm devices that had a stable OS and Ericsson’s kick-ass product design on mobile phone handsets.
My carrier had to beat me around the head to get me to give up my Ericsson T-39. SonyEricsson sucks at it in comparison.
The old layout on Technorati that allowed you to sort search results by authority.