Elegance Lost and Found: Reflections on Efficient Computing
I still remember the quiet confidence of computers in the 1980s. In many offices, especially in technical and academic environments, Unix-based machines simply ran. They were not flashy, and they did not beg for attention, but they were stable, predictable, and elegant. You logged in, did your work, logged out, and trusted that the system would still be there tomorrow, unchanged and unperturbed. Compared to what came later, these machines felt grown-up. They were designed to serve work rather than demand maintenance, and that difference left a lasting impression on me. At the same time, on the personal computing side, machines like the Atari ST and the Amiga demonstrated that efficiency and usability were not limited to expensive workstations. Even as office computers, they were remarkably capable. I vividly remember how natural it felt to insert a single 3.5-inch floppy disk, power on the machine, and immediately start writing a document or working in a spreadsheet. There was no sense...