In thinking about historical hacks I realized I needed to set the scene to make some of them understandable.
This started me thinking about the computing world and culture then vs. now. Everybody knows about the dramatic drop in price of electronics, but I'm not sure everyone has a gut feeling for the magnitude of the change. In fact, I often forget, and I lived thru it.
So: thought for today.
When I started working as a programmer, if I saved my entire salary (no food, no clothing, etc.) I could buy the computer I worked on in only 333 years.
Today I could buy a much more powerful machine every other day!
That helps to explain why we were willing to invest months and sometimes years of programmer time for relatively small gains in computer time. Thereby motivating hacks...
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