Remembering the LAN (2020)

I also fondly remember IPX from when I was a kid. Red Alert 2 and Age of Empires II supported it, and it was truly zero-config on a small LAN. Then, eventually it died off, and I had to learn TCP.

The author’s point about so much not being necessary today, while simultaneously having more drudge work is interesting. I’ve often thought the former, but hadn’t connected it to the latter. For example, I commandeered my family’s two PCs (a Celeron 333 MHz and a Pentium III 550 MHz – what a screamer!) at night to run distcc on, so that Gentoo builds would finish in a somewhat reasonable amount of time. This is simply not necessary anymore. Firefox, which used to be an overnight job, now compiles in 10-20 minutes for most modern CPUs.

On the one hand, this is wonderful – faster feedback loops, more time to tinker. On the other hand, getting distcc set up back then was a fairly large undertaking for a kid, and taught you a good deal about a wide range of topics. Also, since the pain level of failure was so high, you were more careful to get it right the first time, lest you awaken to disappointment.

> Could a part-time programmer like my father write small-business software today? Could he make it as safe and productive as our LAN was? Maybe. If he was canny, and stuck to old-fashioned desktops of the 90s and physically isolated the machines from the internet. But there is no chance you could get the records onto a modern phone safely (or even legally under HIPAA) with the hours my father gave the project.

Their father’s software likely was not HIPAA compliant or safe, just isolated. They speak earlier in the post about it being a permission-less file based database any computer could access, including his personal one. And that any innocuous command could potentially bring the whole thing down.

Certainly looking back with rose colored glasses to the situation. It probably did work great for his father’s needs but “safe and compliant with modern medical data protection laws” is was not.

I do think that a simpler approach to small business software like this example is not a bad goal. This was a great read. Thank you for sharing.

I don't get it. Is it gone? The author doesn't tell what happened since then. Aside from newer machines and modern software, things in the LAN haven't changed much, right?

I started reading it out of remembrance of the LANs I went to in the 90s, but kept reading because of the experience of core logic having much less overhead then very much mirroring my own. Good writing and astute observations.

I must be the same age, remember Netware and also LANtastic and others. I worked on a product that let Macs running AppleTalk connect to PC LANs.

Nice write up, took me back to running LANded NT in the same neck of the woods as the author up in Darwin :) Small world!

Nice read. Love how it evoked the memories from the golden days where everything was exciting, new and fun :)

I remember those days. I feel the same way as the author.

But I think the right place to find that same joy in programming today, is by building stuff with embedded systems. You can do a lot of fun stuff as a kid with an arduino, some components, and instructions from the Internet.

IPX broadcast talk was fun. Forget the command.

'90s Hong Kong! Anyone remember that warez market in Mongkok?

Brought back frightening memories of running a 10BASE2 network on LANtastic. Any one bad connection and the whole network came down. So much fun to troubleshoot.

is there a way to give a 'tailscale IP address' to dumber devices on your network? effectively serving 'tailnet addresses' via DHCP? say to a printer, other lower powered devices, etc. could have sworn i saw an article about this at some point but can't find it

Huh? I am using it rather than remembering it. Since my router only allows specific hosts and ports to be accessed from Internet, there is no need for security between my laptop and my 3D printer, can just upload and print the model / watch it on camera by typing a URL.

I know that this article was basically an ad for Tailscale, which happens to be a product I've really grown to love, but it still struck a chord in me. I share the yearning for the "good old days" when we could just do stuff on the Internet and it felt limitless. The spirit of build over buy felt different then, too. While I don't have a parent who wrote practice management software, I remember a particular niche music store we'd go to using Fox Pro to manage their inventory and catalog. I wish I saw more of that today.

As it happens, I was thinking of whipping up a Rails app to help my wife with a particular task she's got, and it occurred to me I can host it in our basement if I install Tailscale on her phone and computer, and it will just work, particularly if they can get identity integrated beyond joining a tailnet. So maybe the author's point is valid but overstated, and it still exists somewhat, just less often.

> Learning how to store passwords or add OAuth2 to your toy web site is not fun

Hard disagree. OAuth2 is a neat technology and every personal thunk you run across or find yourself asking "why the heck do I need to do this? why can't I just do x?) trying to implement it is an important part of security and instructive on how to build a secure system where you can only trust components to do a minimal thing. Storing passwords (or really salted password hashes) is similar.