Title: Not that progress should be denied <i>entirely</i>, but I often think that the past gets discarded too quickly and many good ideas got lost with the bath water. I&#x27;m certainly not the only one to feel that way.<p>So I&#x27;m wondering what such good ideas that have disappeared can other HNers remember.<p>I&#x27;ll start:<p>In the golden age of sun stations, the BIOS was written in forth, and the ROM contained a forth interpreter. Not only all extension cards ROM was interpreted and therefore all extension cards were architecture independent, but you were given a Forth REPL to tinker around the boot process, or in fact at any later point once the system had started with a special key combination.<p>That was in my opinion way ahead of the modern BIOSes, even taking into account OpenBIOS.<p>Your turn?
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