Remembering the LAN
Metadata
Highlights
- Later I would carry a PC to houses of my friends where we would build ephemeral LANs and play games like Starcraft. (Cathode-ray monitors were heavy.) The LAN was an education and a lifestyle. (View Highlight)
- All the technology is better. The resources to learn are better. But it is not clear to me I would program at all today. Learning how to store passwords or add OAuth2 to your toy web site is not fun. So much of programming today is busywork, or playing defense against a raging internet. You can do so much more, but the activation energy required to start writing fun collaborative software is so much higher you end up using some half-baked SaaS instead. (View Highlight)
- The programmers of the world have built this fantastic internet, full of magic. Free inter-continental video calls. “Micro” VMs available for free from Cloud providers with more processing power and memory than anything I could have bought when I started programming.
For all our mastery, something has been lost. If programming a LAN in the 1990s was the care-free tending to a garden in the countryside, then programming on the internet today is tending a planter box on Madison Avenue in midtown. Anyone can experience your work. You will also have your tilling judged by thousands of passersby, any of whom may ruin your work because the dog they’re walking hasn’t been city trained. (View Highlight)
- The magic moment of small trusted networks and care-free programs does not need be relegated to memory. With enough work, we can bend technology to recreate the magic.
We can have the LAN-like experience of the 90’s back again, and we can add the best parts of the 21st century internet. A safe small space of people we trust, where we can program away from the prying eyes of the multi-billion-person internet. Where the outright villainous will be kept at bay by good identity services and good crypto. (View Highlight)
title: “Remembering the LAN”
author: “David Crawshaw”
url: ”https://tailscale.com/blog/remembering-the-lan/”
date: 2023-07-29
source: reader
tags: media/articles
Remembering the LAN
Metadata
Highlights
- Later I would carry a PC to houses of my friends where we would build ephemeral LANs and play games like Starcraft. (Cathode-ray monitors were heavy.) The LAN was an education and a lifestyle. (View Highlight)
- All the technology is better. The resources to learn are better. But it is not clear to me I would program at all today. Learning how to store passwords or add OAuth2 to your toy web site is not fun. So much of programming today is busywork, or playing defense against a raging internet. You can do so much more, but the activation energy required to start writing fun collaborative software is so much higher you end up using some half-baked SaaS instead. (View Highlight)
- The programmers of the world have built this fantastic internet, full of magic. Free inter-continental video calls. “Micro” VMs available for free from Cloud providers with more processing power and memory than anything I could have bought when I started programming.
For all our mastery, something has been lost. If programming a LAN in the 1990s was the care-free tending to a garden in the countryside, then programming on the internet today is tending a planter box on Madison Avenue in midtown. Anyone can experience your work. You will also have your tilling judged by thousands of passersby, any of whom may ruin your work because the dog they’re walking hasn’t been city trained. (View Highlight)
- The magic moment of small trusted networks and care-free programs does not need be relegated to memory. With enough work, we can bend technology to recreate the magic.
We can have the LAN-like experience of the 90’s back again, and we can add the best parts of the 21st century internet. A safe small space of people we trust, where we can program away from the prying eyes of the multi-billion-person internet. Where the outright villainous will be kept at bay by good identity services and good crypto. (View Highlight)
title: “Remembering the LAN”
author: “David Crawshaw”
url: ”https://tailscale.com/blog/remembering-the-lan/”
date: 2023-12-19
source: reader
tags: media/articles
Remembering the LAN
Metadata
Highlights
- Later I would carry a PC to houses of my friends where we would build ephemeral LANs and play games like Starcraft. (Cathode-ray monitors were heavy.) The LAN was an education and a lifestyle. (View Highlight)
- All the technology is better. The resources to learn are better. But it is not clear to me I would program at all today. Learning how to store passwords or add OAuth2 to your toy web site is not fun. So much of programming today is busywork, or playing defense against a raging internet. You can do so much more, but the activation energy required to start writing fun collaborative software is so much higher you end up using some half-baked SaaS instead. (View Highlight)
- The programmers of the world have built this fantastic internet, full of magic. Free inter-continental video calls. “Micro” VMs available for free from Cloud providers with more processing power and memory than anything I could have bought when I started programming.
For all our mastery, something has been lost. If programming a LAN in the 1990s was the care-free tending to a garden in the countryside, then programming on the internet today is tending a planter box on Madison Avenue in midtown. Anyone can experience your work. You will also have your tilling judged by thousands of passersby, any of whom may ruin your work because the dog they’re walking hasn’t been city trained. (View Highlight)
- The magic moment of small trusted networks and care-free programs does not need be relegated to memory. With enough work, we can bend technology to recreate the magic.
We can have the LAN-like experience of the 90’s back again, and we can add the best parts of the 21st century internet. A safe small space of people we trust, where we can program away from the prying eyes of the multi-billion-person internet. Where the outright villainous will be kept at bay by good identity services and good crypto. (View Highlight)