There’s a lot to be said for defining a simple kernel that can be easily ported, then building upon that kernel. Smalltalk-80 essentially exists today on multiple modern platforms because of this.The original lisp machine does not exist today (as a modern environment) for this very reason.
The following bit is not a spoiler, as it plays no part in the plot of the novel it describes, except giving the novel a reason to exist, of sorts.
An element of Charles Stross' science fiction novel Glasshouse, set about a seven hundred years from now, is the occurrence of a new Dark Age. The Dark Age is situated now, in the turn of the 20th/21st century, and exists because people used so many different encryption systems, recovering data before a unification of standards (?) became impossible. As such, all information from that era is lost, and to figure out what happened, a social experiment is created, where people are made to live in a 1960’s society.
There’s a lot to be said for defining a simple kernel that can be easily ported, then building upon that kernel. Smalltalk-80 essentially exists today on multiple modern platforms because of this.The original lisp machine does not exist today (as a modern environment) for this very reason.
The following bit is not a spoiler, as it plays no part in the plot of the novel it describes, except giving the novel a reason to exist, of sorts.
An element of Charles Stross' science fiction novel Glasshouse, set about a seven hundred years from now, is the occurrence of a new Dark Age. The Dark Age is situated now, in the turn of the 20th/21st century, and exists because people used so many different encryption systems, recovering data before a unification of standards (?) became impossible. As such, all information from that era is lost, and to figure out what happened, a social experiment is created, where people are made to live in a 1960’s society.