A 25-Year-Old Blog Looks Back At 40 Years of Computing (markround.com)
- Reference: 0184063916
- News link: https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/26/06/24/0616251/a-25-year-old-blog-looks-back-at-40-years-of-computing
- Source link: https://www.markround.com/blog/2026/06/17/25-its-only-when-you-look-back/
> Longtime reader here (since mid-1999 -- Hot Grits! Oog the Caveman! Beowulf clusters!), and I can still remember posting back on [2]Slashdot's own 5th anniversary . Time's rolled on: my own blog just turned 25, and it's now roughly 40 years since I first sat down at a computer. So I went digging through archive.org, old backups, and a box of ZIP disks, and wrote up a [3]long look back at four decades of computing through the one website that's been my online home along the way.
>
> It runs from my first 8-bit micro and a 1,200-baud modem through discovering the actual Internet at university (and burning far too many hours on Slashdot and sister sites like freshmeat.net), past gloriously pimped-out Enlightenment Linux desktops, all the way to the modern cloud-native world. Plenty of dodgy screenshots, terrible code, and fond memories of long-gone haunts [4]like kuro5hin.org and Linux Coffee Talk along the way.
[1] https://slashdot.org/~Mark+Round
[2] https://news.slashdot.org/story/02/10/01/1231250/slashdot-turns-5
[3] https://www.markround.com/blog/2026/06/17/25-its-only-when-you-look-back/
[4] https://idle.slashdot.org/story/16/05/01/1459249/rip-kuro5hin
First Post! (Score:2)
(I've been around since 1999 too). You missed Natalie Portman, BTW
Re: (Score:2)
Ooooh, 5 digit UID!
Re Natalie Portman, that was the Hot Grits part, no ? I seem to recall that was a key element of that particular meme.
Re: (Score:2)
Pah, all you kids get off my lawn.
Greybeards are evven older (Score:2)
For those who don't realize it, 40 years ago the Mac has existed for 2 yeras. This is well into the era of 8-bit Commodore 64s and Apple IIs, alongside 16 bit machines like the IBM PC. Console wise, we're in the NES era.
The years of the old 8-bits like the VIC-20 and TRS-80 have started to wane, as had hobby computers you built yourself. Perhaps it's the era of modern computing as we know it today where people just bought boxes off the shelf for their computers more so than soldering computers together.
Anyo
Re: (Score:2)
I feel ancient now.
Yes, I have a beard. and yes, quite a lot of it is grey.
First Post! (Score:4, Funny)
Front page of Slashdot after 25 years, and First Post. Life goal unlocked!
Re: (Score:1)
Hell yeah! Also that was a great write-up and I love all of the pictures, it's a great trip to the past.
Re: (Score:2)
Frost Piss!!!
Re: (Score:2)
Another ancient here - I still try to convince the admins to give me my first account back, [1]this one - number 13802 [slashdot.org]. The place both has and has not changed - it always had its share of ranting, but people do seem to knee-jerk more negatively to developments than in ye olden days.
Note that I created my account, saw that nearly 14,000 people were here and thought "what's the point? Who will ever possibly hear me in a place with 14,000 people?". Now of course, you can get ten times that for a picture of a d
[1] https://slashdot.org/~scorpion