Pfft. Modern computers are rubbish. Get a PDP11 and you’re set for life!
Programmers and their walking sticks converge in Canada
www.theregister.com
Not true. I worked with/on PDP11's. Even owned one at one time. Where I first worked they were sold off with their tape drive units to the gas company to run payroll for $1500 each. Later a relative working for a company that serviced them told me I could get one if we went and picked it up for his company. It was at a drugstore chain headquarters. They weren't going to service it and the client was replacing them with high end servers running 386's or something. So I owned a PDP 11, a separate Winchester hard drive which I think was 20 meg. Plus a freezer sized HP power conditioner for it. And all the documentation which nearly filled the bed of a pickup truck. The stipulation was I could never sale it unless it was parted out.
I did run it a few times. I had some Lunar lander simulation software from college and a version of a Star Trek game. I also had some actually useful stuff that came with it. Man did it use the electricity. I would sort of like to have it now, but it was bulky, expensive to run, and not really useful to me personally. I hated breaking it up for parts.
Then again maybe you are right. I've read some nuclear reactors still run them in Eastern Europe (so I guess Canada isn't alone), and a couple big factories have never replaced them.
It was the first computer I ever used. In high school I had a part time job at a local university physics lab. The department head had one, and gave me some books to take home and learn how to use it. On that one the simple programming I did was all on paper tape. It is why I first learned hexadecimal. Amazing that they sort of made seriously useful computing affordable and practical, and then I look at the smart phone on my desk and go.........WOW!