Reinventing how we use computers
For computers to be used forever, we must accept that the code written for a computer can be outlived by the form factor. So what persists throughout time is not necessarily code but ideas.<p>So I want people to create whitepapers and document their learnings of their project and industry projects so others can learn from their lessons. The good ideas should be passed on through time.<p>For example, NES&#x2F;Playstation&#x2F;Switch&#x2F;Xbox&#x2F;PC game sourcecode are essentially one-shot projects, the code is not mutated much after release except for bug fixes whereas general purpose computing the code must be adapted over time to cope with changes in the world. The lineage of code written for these game consoles and old PCs, amiga and commodore are all ending. But the ideas behind that code persists.<p>For example, the code of Pentium Windows 95 tower probably doesn&#x27;t resemble the code of Windows 11 anymore. And the tower CPU is very similar.<p>You can probably see ideas in the code there but everything else is different.<p>All the lessons of DOS, Amiga, Commodore and other old retro computers and minicomputers such as PDP-11 and IBM mainframes should all be learned and passed on.<p>We want software ideas that are durable and last forever. File systems are an idea that are durable. Processes are an idea that are durable.<p>I do wonder how many young people possess the capacity to writing an operating system today. The skills have been long fought by Linus and other operating system developers throughout time.<p>I want people to document the lessons and implementation notes of various low level system services. The UNIX POSIX API is durable.<p>I&#x27;m writing this on an Intel 10th generation NUC and it is plenty fast for running Ubuntu virtual machines and running IntelliJ on Windows 11. It has an Intel Processor Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-10710U CPU @ 1.10GHz, 1608 Mhz, 6 Core(s), 12 Logical Processor(s)<p>I suspect I can get a lot of usage out of this computer and move homes more than once if need be. The computer is only 4 inches by 4 inches so it is easily transportable.<p>Another idea that needs to persist is the idea of archive quality formats. PDF, JPEG, Markdown shall probably be readable in 10 years time. But other document formats maybe not so much.