The Great Illusion: When We Believed BeOS Would Save the World

Summary

A nostalgic dive into the Hacker News thread that in 2015 reminded us how beautiful we were when we dreamed in multithreading Once upon a time, in a galaxy not so far away called “the ’90s,” we still believed that the future of computing would be decided based on pure technical merit. What naivety! It was an era when an operating system could make you fall in love at first boot, when opening four videos simultaneously without hiccups seemed more magical than pulling a rabbit from a hat. BeOS wasn’t just an operating system: it was a promise, a dream, a love letter to the beauty of well-crafted code. The nostalgia thread: when Hacker News started crying In 2015, while everyone was discussing the Apple Watch and the Ellen Pao controversy on Reddit, someone on Hacker News had the brilliant (or cruel) idea of posting a BeOS demo video from 1998. And so, like war veterans reuniting over an old photograph, the community gathered for a moment of collective nostalgia that hurt more than a romantic breakup. “BeOS was really amazing at the time,” began one user with the same emotion as someone talking about their first love. And they were right, dammit! While Windows NT pretended to be a serious operating system, while Linux was still “unusable for mortals” (oh, those times!), and while Copland remained the vaporware it was, BeOS ran smooth as silk on machines you’d use as paperweights today. The architecture that made us dream (and still makes us cry) Looking back today, BeOS had everything we’re still trying to get from our modern operating systems. Pervasive multithreading? Check. File system with metadata and database-like queries? Check. Low-latency audio and video that never skipped a beat? Double check with standing ovation. As a former Be employee recounted in the thread (one of those lucky ones who lived the dream from the inside): “You could deadlock the entire system, but I’ll be damned if your CD was going to stop playing perfectly. Not even a skip.” This, ladies ...