Re:The mainframe is alive and thriving
by rbanffy on Friday March 12, 2021 @04:10AM
(#26433663)
The only reason it failed is because there was little incentive to port software away from x86.
Most of us didn't consider writing cross-platform software back then and the few who did were writing software for Unix, not Windows, and that because there wasn't a single dominant OS (Unix was a fuzzy target) and binary architecture you could write for, so you had to think about portability.
Oddly enough, there was a lot of cross-platform work on games in the 80's because the home computer market was very fragmented.
Most of us didn't consider writing cross-platform software back then and the few who did were writing software for Unix, not Windows, and that because there wasn't a single dominant OS (Unix was a fuzzy target) and binary architecture you could write for, so you had to think about portability.
Oddly enough, there was a lot of cross-platform work on games in the 80's because the home computer market was very fragmented.