shadowkat: (Default)
[personal profile] shadowkat
I'm loving Halt Catch Fire - which gets better as it moves forward. Had a nice discussion with my brother about it today. We both love the character Joe McMillian, and both have issues with Cameron, the somewhat one-dimensional gamer - although we both knew people a lot like her.

The series is an excellent inside look at the world of the dot.coms and the computer companies from the 1980s to the 1990s. It airs on Netflix, but was originally an AMC series. I like it and the characters so much better than Breaking Bad, it is much more real to me - and much tighter, with stronger female characters. But it got less acclaim and less notice, unfortunately.

Bro and me both worked in the early dot-com industry. We watched it develop from lap-tops to the world-wide web. I remember Mozaic, Netscape, Yahoo, Calnet, Compuserve, American Online, and all the others. And when Microsoft Windows revolutionized the PC market. I started work on the old IBM machines, where you had to basically put in code to get anywhere.

And my brother started in game development.

Also it depicts very well how people deal with each other and allow their insecurities and egos to get in the way. What is most brilliant about it - is how they keep failing. It's a great subversion of a classic trope - which is usually in television, you watch people succeed at their endeavors. These guys continue to fail. They have these great ideas, but they are either too early, one of the key players doesn't step up to the plate, etc. All the things that go wrong, often do.

Success is kind of a game of luck. It's happenstance.

It's what my brother loves about the series - we watch them try and constantly fail.

And I appreciate it too. It's so realistic. Most, actually all the companies I've been in - that were in the private sector failed in some way at their intent. They either got success by merging and laying massive amounts of people off, got bought out at a low sum, or just failed.

Another great bit is how evolved and redefined each character is - they are constantly changing. And how it addresses romantic love and the process of building a company. All of it.

Four seasons. 10 episodes each. On Netflix.

Check it out.

Date: 2020-08-25 02:36 pm (UTC)
yourlibrarian: TechSupportSam-ruttadk (SPN-TechSupportSam-ruttadk)
From: [personal profile] yourlibrarian
Just to let you know, there's a bold code that didn't get turned off in the first sentence.

Which season are you on now?

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