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In the example of your Amiga, your hard drive failed, but it probably would still boot right into any game from any floppy [...] The same game, replicated in Unity, requires a several gigabyte You have a good point to make, but the argument you've employed is bad. When you said,
> In the days of the Amiga or the Archimedes, it was quite possible to boot entire app or os/app combo and just leave the computer on indefinitely, without it crashing itself even if untouched.
You've mixed up reliability with understandably & maintainability. In an uptime competition, a retrocomputer will lose the game to many modern computers, it's almost guaranteed. But it's not the point. The point is what happens after it's down. If it's a retrocomputer, it's possible for a single person to understand every aspect of the computer and to perform troubleshooting down to the component level. It's also easy for a single hobbyist to build one's own computer using the 6502 chip. But it's usually impractical or impossible on modern hardware. My personal understanding on the thesis of the talk is that modern computers have much less understandably & maintainability than retrocomputers, and this, in the long term, makes the civilization as a whole, less reliable. It's not a question of how durable we can make a single computer to be.
You can make a better argument if you stop saying how reliable retrocomputers are and focusing on understandably and complexity.
You have a good point to make, but the argument you've employed is bad. When you said,
> In the days of the Amiga or the Archimedes, it was quite possible to boot entire app or os/app combo and just leave the computer on indefinitely, without it crashing itself even if untouched.
You've mixed up reliability with understandably & maintainability. In an uptime competition, a retrocomputer will lose the game to many modern computers, it's almost guaranteed. But it's not the point. The point is what happens after it's down. If it's a retrocomputer, it's possible for a single person to understand every aspect of the computer and to perform troubleshooting down to the component level. It's also easy for a single hobbyist to build one's own computer using the 6502 chip. But it's usually impractical or impossible on modern hardware. My personal understanding on the thesis of the talk is that modern computers have much less understandably & maintainability than retrocomputers, and this, in the long term, makes the civilization as a whole, less reliable. It's not a question of how durable we can make a single computer to be.
You can make a better argument if you stop saying how reliable retrocomputers are and focusing on understandably and complexity.