Re: Hey, idiots!

[pro-ren!pro-applejacks!kentm (Michael Kent)]

egersten@k12.ucs.umass.edu (Eric Gerstenberger (Cathedral HS 95)) writes:

>Hey shumucks:
>
>Do you all know what the primary function of the 6502/65C02 chips used in
>all the apples except the GS is now?  Open up your nintento and look at the
>one chip on the board and you will notice it says 6502--LAMERS, LAMERS,
>LAMERS!!!!
>-- 
>Eric Gerstenberger
>[egersten@k12.ucs.umass.edu]


Heh, heh, heh.  Since you're young and still immature, I guess I can forgive
you for this obvious piece of flamebait.  But when you grow up you will learn
that occaisionally certain events and people -- and sometimes metal and
plastic and silicon -- will come together and become something quite beyond
what they appear to be.  And you will relish those events and those things
for the rest of your life.  Your friends and your family will never know why,
and they never can, because they have not experienced what you have.  But you
will never forget.

It's kind of funny.  I used to think like this kid, but about airplanes, not
computers.  You see, I build jet fighters for a living, and there was just no
way I could ever be the least bit interested in Cessnas and Pipers when I had
Eagles and Hornets to play with.  Or so I thought.  Then one day some guy in
my workgroup took me up in a Piper Arrow and I was hooked.  I've flown full-up
F-15 Eagle simulators, been shot at by SAMs, and landed the National
Aero-Space Plane simulator on the lakebed at Edwards Air Force Base.  But none
of that computer-controlled whiz-bang stuff -- as great and fast and powerful
as it is -- compares one iota to doing touch-and-go's in your own Cessna 152.
There's something about being in complete control of your own plane -- feeling
every little gust of wind, hearing every little sputter of the eninge -- that
no one who has not experienced it will ever understand.

It's the same way with Apple II's.  No one playing with a GUI MacAppliance or
Windows machine will ever understand dropping into Monitor to do a hex dump
of a troublesome subroutine.  Or writing self-modifying Applesoft code.  Or
even understand what every chip inside that plastic case does.  That type of
experience may not be for the masses, but to those who understand it there is
no equal.

But one thing strikes me as odd.  In the aerospace industry, classic airplanes
such as the DC-3 and the P-51 Mustang are almost idolized for their revolu-
tionary advancement of the state of the art.  Even today, aerospace engineers
and pilots building and flying far more sophisticated machines travel
thousands of miles to see one in flight.  Yet the computer industry has
nothing but contempt for a machine as revolutionary in its field as the DC-3
was in aerospace (I'm talking about the Apple II.).  Why?  Why is it so diff-
icult for so many people to say, "We can build far more powerful machines
today, but it was that computer that showed us the way -- that made it all
possbile"?  Why the contempt?

Mike


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