Hacker News Reader

Comment by andrehacker | Hacker News Reader

O, this show, basically the Forrest Gump story of computing in the 80's/90's: the main cast somehow is a significant part or straight out inventors of every piece of technology of that timeframe: on-line gaming, social networking, online marketplace, dot com. The acting is.. interesting: Lee Pace trying to channel Don Draper, Scoot McNairy being Scoot, Kerry Bishé just doing a bit of over-acting and Mackenzie Davis, well, she's cool.

Loved to hate that show in the first run. Then streamed it 4 more times (playing in the background, but still): the accuracy of depiction of technology, startup issues regarding funding, liaisons and other ups and downs, personalities in tech: thumbs up.

View on HN

HACF is probably the most criminally underrated show in recent television history. Yeah the basic premise might be a Mad Men tech rehash, and yeah you kind of have to endure season 1 before you get to the good part, but the characters are so wonderfully crafted that I still think about them >5 years after watching it.

In the first season I thought "Oh, this company is supposed to be Compaq?" but then realized Compaq was one of many companies that all got the exact same idea at the exact same time. After that realization I saw the characters and their projects as tragic also-rans with a series of near-successes.

I've only seen season one (so far, looks like I may watch the rest :) but having lived startups during that period, it definitely captured the vibe.

The first season was the weakest. Seasons 2-4 are some of the best television ever IMHO. Once they stopped trying to make it Mad Men with tech, they freed themselves up to succeed.

I liked the first season because the relationship between Joe and Gordon was realistic -- it was basically the relationship between Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, Joe, like Jobs, was a slick charismatic character with little technical skill who piggybacks on the work of Gordon, as Jobs did Wozniak. The later seasons about Mutiny seemed to happen in a fantasy world that didn't really reflect the reality of the 1980s tech world despite the superficial resemblance of Mutiny to Habitat.

Sure, but, the relationship was symbiotic as it didn't seem that Gordon would have been able to build "the Giant" (PC) or other substantial project without the vision, push and the acquired funding (at ANY cost) from Joe.

This too (and I know I'll get flack for this one) seemed to be the case with Jobs and Wozniak, Wozniak is an undisputed genius on both hard and software level but Silicon Valley had and has very smart engineers, it was the two of them that were needed to make the magic happen.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com