<![CDATA[Spent my childhood optimizing CONFIG]]>Spent my childhood optimizing CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT to fit everything into 640 KB.

Now one browser tab needs 2 GB of RAM so 17 analytics companies can find out I looked at socks.

]]>https://forum.fedi.dk/topic/2d12d1d6-63fe-4f4e-be95-5217e6997a1a/spent-my-childhood-optimizing-configRSS for NodeSun, 12 Jul 2026 06:02:42 GMTWed, 08 Jul 2026 22:41:22 GMT60<![CDATA[Reply to Spent my childhood optimizing CONFIG on Fri, 10 Jul 2026 09:56:50 GMT]]>@roadskater @syferdet @fribbledom Where we’re going, we don’t need socks.

]]>https://forum.fedi.dk/post/https://tutoteket.no/users/tanketom/statuses/116895082806321882https://forum.fedi.dk/post/https://tutoteket.no/users/tanketom/statuses/116895082806321882Fri, 10 Jul 2026 09:56:50 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to Spent my childhood optimizing CONFIG on Fri, 10 Jul 2026 08:50:49 GMT]]>@benofbrown It was running Win 3.11

]]>https://forum.fedi.dk/post/https://social.tchncs.de/ap/users/115788169843336614/statuses/116894823213531337https://forum.fedi.dk/post/https://social.tchncs.de/ap/users/115788169843336614/statuses/116894823213531337Fri, 10 Jul 2026 08:50:49 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to Spent my childhood optimizing CONFIG on Fri, 10 Jul 2026 08:31:38 GMT]]>@hierkiosk @fribbledom recycle bin? I was doing this in DOS 🀣

A friend of my parents sorted it out in the end.

]]>https://forum.fedi.dk/post/https://toot.cat/users/benofbrown/statuses/116894747738190825https://forum.fedi.dk/post/https://toot.cat/users/benofbrown/statuses/116894747738190825Fri, 10 Jul 2026 08:31:38 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to Spent my childhood optimizing CONFIG on Fri, 10 Jul 2026 06:25:52 GMT]]>@fribbledom

EMM386.EXE FTW!

]]>https://forum.fedi.dk/post/https://chaos.social/users/eggimt/statuses/116894253200943288https://forum.fedi.dk/post/https://chaos.social/users/eggimt/statuses/116894253200943288Fri, 10 Jul 2026 06:25:52 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to Spent my childhood optimizing CONFIG on Fri, 10 Jul 2026 04:41:50 GMT]]>@KasTasMykolas @lord @fribbledom oh my god. I feel like just one is plenty?!

]]>https://forum.fedi.dk/post/https://mastodon.social/ap/users/115645779423959714/statuses/116893844156708057https://forum.fedi.dk/post/https://mastodon.social/ap/users/115645779423959714/statuses/116893844156708057Fri, 10 Jul 2026 04:41:50 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to Spent my childhood optimizing CONFIG on Fri, 10 Jul 2026 04:06:44 GMT]]>@wolf480pl @patterfloof @fribbledom
I didn't intend that meaning but I see what you mean.

My job is in LLM Inference, and there we actually look into performance as it is a business interest to have that run efficient on the servers. I guess when it runs on customers's computers, the motivation is less clear.

]]>https://forum.fedi.dk/post/https://bonn.social/users/martin_ueding/statuses/116893706104568730https://forum.fedi.dk/post/https://bonn.social/users/martin_ueding/statuses/116893706104568730Fri, 10 Jul 2026 04:06:44 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to Spent my childhood optimizing CONFIG on Fri, 10 Jul 2026 02:52:12 GMT]]>@Megawatt @jeroenvanbergen @fribbledom

Ha ha 🀣, loving this thread

]]>https://forum.fedi.dk/post/https://social.vivaldi.net/users/mtnrbq65/statuses/116893413070960578https://forum.fedi.dk/post/https://social.vivaldi.net/users/mtnrbq65/statuses/116893413070960578Fri, 10 Jul 2026 02:52:12 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to Spent my childhood optimizing CONFIG on Fri, 10 Jul 2026 02:40:08 GMT]]>@mtnrbq65 @jeroenvanbergen @fribbledom and SMARTDRV FTW.

]]>https://forum.fedi.dk/post/https://infosec.exchange/users/Megawatt/statuses/116893365594152946https://forum.fedi.dk/post/https://infosec.exchange/users/Megawatt/statuses/116893365594152946Fri, 10 Jul 2026 02:40:08 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to Spent my childhood optimizing CONFIG on Fri, 10 Jul 2026 02:15:54 GMT]]>@AbramKedge @fribbledom ironically I got a lot more use out of EMS back then. About all that would use XMS was a few games using the Wolfenstein 3D engine. Newer games and Windows 3.1 were DPMI, older either EMS or just conventional.

]]>https://forum.fedi.dk/post/https://nerdculture.de/users/bthylafh/statuses/116893270791355100https://forum.fedi.dk/post/https://nerdculture.de/users/bthylafh/statuses/116893270791355100Fri, 10 Jul 2026 02:15:54 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to Spent my childhood optimizing CONFIG on Fri, 10 Jul 2026 01:59:10 GMT]]>@fribbledom @kevin
These kids today don't know what it's like getting 639k free base memory so your badly coded bbs will load.

]]>https://forum.fedi.dk/post/https://infosec.exchange/users/FritzAdalis/statuses/116893204485611757https://forum.fedi.dk/post/https://infosec.exchange/users/FritzAdalis/statuses/116893204485611757Fri, 10 Jul 2026 01:59:10 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to Spent my childhood optimizing CONFIG on Fri, 10 Jul 2026 01:35:07 GMT]]>@martin_ueding @wolf480pl @patterfloof @fribbledom

@fribbledom

I was just compiling two copies of the business application I'm working on (policy management in insurance), in two IDE instances. It sent my 64 GB of RAM machine into thrashing.

😱 😱 😱 😱 😱 😱 😱 😱 😱 😱 😱

NO, I was NOT running Outlook nor browsers nor much of anything else at the time!

πŸ’’

]]>https://forum.fedi.dk/post/https://mastodon.social/users/JeffGrigg/statuses/116893109955230895https://forum.fedi.dk/post/https://mastodon.social/users/JeffGrigg/statuses/116893109955230895Fri, 10 Jul 2026 01:35:07 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to Spent my childhood optimizing CONFIG on Thu, 09 Jul 2026 23:15:55 GMT]]>@fribbledom
The names of the files are the reason I like to listen to 'MASTER BOOT RECORD' πŸ€˜πŸ»πŸ˜€

https://masterbootrecord.bandcamp.com/album/c-chkdsk-f

]]>https://forum.fedi.dk/post/https://chaos.social/users/xohvotoc/statuses/116892562606856929https://forum.fedi.dk/post/https://chaos.social/users/xohvotoc/statuses/116892562606856929Thu, 09 Jul 2026 23:15:55 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to Spent my childhood optimizing CONFIG on Thu, 09 Jul 2026 21:56:34 GMT]]>@benofbrown This happend to me, too. Probably it was still in recycle bin, but I never got the computer running again, had no-one to help me with that. @fribbledom

]]>https://forum.fedi.dk/post/https://social.tchncs.de/ap/users/115788169843336614/statuses/116892250552406339https://forum.fedi.dk/post/https://social.tchncs.de/ap/users/115788169843336614/statuses/116892250552406339Thu, 09 Jul 2026 21:56:34 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to Spent my childhood optimizing CONFIG on Thu, 09 Jul 2026 21:44:50 GMT]]>@fribbledom It felt easy most of the time. If a program needed 640K, I could skip most of the startup. For protected mode, I could skip everything, just load the mouse driver, and it ran well.

It became harder with later computers, simply because the Bios was starting to become larger, but by then Dos was starting to be replaced.

]]>https://forum.fedi.dk/post/https://mstdn.ca/users/arem/statuses/116892204415099318https://forum.fedi.dk/post/https://mstdn.ca/users/arem/statuses/116892204415099318Thu, 09 Jul 2026 21:44:50 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to Spent my childhood optimizing CONFIG on Thu, 09 Jul 2026 20:40:37 GMT]]>@fribbledom @buherator accurate πŸ’―

]]>https://forum.fedi.dk/post/https://infosec.exchange/users/raptor/statuses/116891951911735232https://forum.fedi.dk/post/https://infosec.exchange/users/raptor/statuses/116891951911735232Thu, 09 Jul 2026 20:40:37 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to Spent my childhood optimizing CONFIG on Thu, 09 Jul 2026 20:02:32 GMT]]>@fribbledom To be fair - optimizing config.sys and autoexec.bat wasnβ€˜t so much fun back in the days either. It was more a pain in the a** when your favourite game just wouldnβ€˜t run. @bijram

]]>https://forum.fedi.dk/post/https://mastodon.social/users/hyperpac/statuses/116891802182127498https://forum.fedi.dk/post/https://mastodon.social/users/hyperpac/statuses/116891802182127498Thu, 09 Jul 2026 20:02:32 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to Spent my childhood optimizing CONFIG on Thu, 09 Jul 2026 19:58:04 GMT]]>@fribbledom

…*frantically increases BUFFERS=*

]]>https://forum.fedi.dk/post/https://mastodon.well.com/users/rk/statuses/116891784619173097https://forum.fedi.dk/post/https://mastodon.well.com/users/rk/statuses/116891784619173097Thu, 09 Jul 2026 19:58:04 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to Spent my childhood optimizing CONFIG on Thu, 09 Jul 2026 19:39:06 GMT]]>@martin_ueding @patterfloof @fribbledom
you do realize this can be read as a "fuck you, got mine"? πŸ˜›

I would appreciate if programmers and product managers started caring more about resource usage.

I'd also appreciate a job where I get to spend a significant portion of my time optimizing code.

But I'm not seeing any of these happen yet, and I'm not holding my breath.

]]>https://forum.fedi.dk/post/https://mstdn.io/users/wolf480pl/statuses/116891710013029566https://forum.fedi.dk/post/https://mstdn.io/users/wolf480pl/statuses/116891710013029566Thu, 09 Jul 2026 19:39:06 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to Spent my childhood optimizing CONFIG on Thu, 09 Jul 2026 19:37:25 GMT]]>@fribbledom
I used to have 256 MB of RAM in the 64 MB era and it was luxurious. Now I have 16 GB in my personal laptop and I sometimes consider upgrading to 32 GB to fit all the browser tabs in there …

]]>https://forum.fedi.dk/post/https://bonn.social/users/martin_ueding/statuses/116891703384550854https://forum.fedi.dk/post/https://bonn.social/users/martin_ueding/statuses/116891703384550854Thu, 09 Jul 2026 19:37:25 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to Spent my childhood optimizing CONFIG on Thu, 09 Jul 2026 19:36:29 GMT]]>@wolf480pl @patterfloof @fribbledom
I got a work laptop with 64 GB of RAM such that I can run VS Code, Slack, Obsidian, Spotify and Zotero (all Electron apps which ship their own copy of Chromium engine).

I am kind of happy that RAM got expensive again such that programmers might actually start to value it again …

]]>https://forum.fedi.dk/post/https://bonn.social/users/martin_ueding/statuses/116891699721436417https://forum.fedi.dk/post/https://bonn.social/users/martin_ueding/statuses/116891699721436417Thu, 09 Jul 2026 19:36:29 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to Spent my childhood optimizing CONFIG on Thu, 09 Jul 2026 19:34:55 GMT]]>@SunDancer @fribbledom
ironically, most of the games would immediately run some code that was functionally speaking "hey fuck DOS and 8-bit real 8086 mode, we're running our own custom special purpose 32 bit protected mode operating system, just so we can use that honkin 4 megabytes of RAM! "

]]>https://forum.fedi.dk/post/https://sauropods.win/users/llewelly/statuses/116891693581417136https://forum.fedi.dk/post/https://sauropods.win/users/llewelly/statuses/116891693581417136Thu, 09 Jul 2026 19:34:55 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to Spent my childhood optimizing CONFIG on Thu, 09 Jul 2026 19:31:06 GMT]]>@fribbledom you know the old saying. An army lives on its feet blogs. Or something like that.

]]>https://forum.fedi.dk/post/https://sauropods.win/users/llewelly/statuses/116891678602729155https://forum.fedi.dk/post/https://sauropods.win/users/llewelly/statuses/116891678602729155Thu, 09 Jul 2026 19:31:06 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to Spent my childhood optimizing CONFIG on Thu, 09 Jul 2026 19:26:22 GMT]]>@mathew @fribbledom Wear them with pride!

]]>https://forum.fedi.dk/post/https://mastodon.social/users/the_wub/statuses/116891659942849010https://forum.fedi.dk/post/https://mastodon.social/users/the_wub/statuses/116891659942849010Thu, 09 Jul 2026 19:26:22 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to Spent my childhood optimizing CONFIG on Thu, 09 Jul 2026 19:23:06 GMT]]>@fribbledom never fear. Now that AI has set a new precedent by forcing RAM prices to double every 6 months, soon the era of needing to optimize for minimal memory use will return!

]]>https://forum.fedi.dk/post/https://sauropods.win/users/llewelly/statuses/116891647126954531https://forum.fedi.dk/post/https://sauropods.win/users/llewelly/statuses/116891647126954531Thu, 09 Jul 2026 19:23:06 GMT