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The Rise and Fall of Silicon Graphics

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346 points BirAdam | 4 comments | 05 Apr 24 16:42 UTC | HN request time: 1.506s | source
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tombert ◴[05 Apr 24 17:07 UTC] No.39944744[source]▶
There's a few cases in the history of computers where it feels like the world just "chose wrong". One example is the Amiga; the Amiga really was better than anything Apple or Microsoft/IBM was doing at the time, but for market-force reasons that depress me, Commodore isn't the "Apple" of today.

Similarly, it feels like Silicon Graphics is a case where they really should have become more standard. Now, unlike Amiga, they were too expensive to catch on with regular consumers, but I feel like they should have become and stayed the "standard" for workstation computers.

Irix was a really cool OS, and 4Dwm was pretty nice to use and play with. It makes me sad that they beaten by Apple.

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hn_throwaway_99 ◴[05 Apr 24 17:14 UTC] No.39944821[source]▶
> Similarly, it feels like Silicon Graphics is a case where they really should have become more standard. Now, unlike Amiga, they were too expensive to catch on with regular consumers, but I feel like they should have become and stayed the "standard" for workstation computers.

I think you highlighted very correctly there, though, why SGI lost. It turned out there were cheaper options, which while not on par with SGI workstations initially, just improved at a faster rate than SGI and eventually ended up with a much better cost/functionality profile. I feel like SGI just bet wrong. The article talks about how they acquired Cray, which were originally these awesome supercomputers. But it turned out supercomputers essentially got replaced by giant networks of much lower cost PCs.

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1. bunderbunder ◴[05 Apr 24 17:28 UTC] No.39944942[source]▶
Hypothesis:

What smaller businesses are using will tend to be what takes over in the future, just due to natural processes. When smaller businesses grow, they would generally prefer to fund the concurrent growth of existing vendors that they like using than they are to switch to the existing "industrial-grade" vendor.

At the same time, larger organizations that can afford to start with the industrial-grade vendors are only as loyal as they are locked in.

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2. tombert ◴[05 Apr 24 17:45 UTC] No.39945114[source]▶
I mean, there are corporations who only sell to very large corporations and have had plenty of success doing so. Stuff like computational fluid dynamics software, for example, has a pretty-finite number of potential clients, and I don't think I could afford a license to ANSYS even if I wanted one [1], since it goes into the tens of thousands of dollars. I don't think there are a ton of startups using it.

But I think you're broadly right.

[1] Yes I know about OpenFOAM, I know I could use that if I really wanted.

3. 01HNNWZ0MV43FF ◴[05 Apr 24 17:45 UTC] No.39945121[source]▶
I see the same trend in programming languages. Say a really solid career lasts from about 20 to 60, 40 years long. Say that halfway through your career, 20 years in, you're considered a respectable senior dev who gets to influence what languages companies hire for and build on.

So in 20 years in, the current batch of senior devs will be retiring, and the current noobies will have become senior devs.

*Whatever language is easy to learn today will be a big deal in 20 years*

That's how PHP, Python, and JavaScript won. Since JavaScript got so much money poured on it to make it fast, secure, easy, with a big ecosystem, I say JS (or at least TS) will still be a big deal in 20 years.

The latest batch of languages know this, and that's why there are no big minimal languages. Rust comes with a good package manager, unit tester, linter, self-updater, etc., because a language with friction for noobies will simply die off.

One might ask how we got stuck with the languages of script kiddies and custom animated mouse cursors for websites. There's no other way it could turn out, that's just how people learn languages.

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4. chuckadams ◴[05 Apr 24 19:34 UTC] No.39946214[source]▶
Back in the old days there was a glut of crappy bloated slow software written in BASIC. JS is the BASIC of the 21st century: you can write good software in it, but the low bar to entry means sifting through a lot of dross too.

My take: that’s just fine. Tightly crafted code is not a lost art, and is in fact getting easier to write these days. You’re just not forced into scrabbling for every last byte and cpu cycle anymore just to get acceptable results.