[NTLK] Einstein, last call

[Victor Rehorst]

Am I the only one who feels a bittersweet sadness about this? I've sat 
on this feeling for a day and a half now, and it's not going away, so 
I'm going to have to inflict it on y'all.

The Einstein project has been on two-decade-long[1] journey, that 
started by proving that this community could take some control and 
decide what the future was of this platform that we love.  And very 
quickly, it became one of the cornerstones of this community: people 
gathered around, watching the progress, asking questions, making 
suggestions, offering encouragement and making any contributions that 
they could.  We celebrated every milestone and each piece of hard-won 
progress made by analyzing, understanding, documenting, and 
implementing.  There may only be a handful of contributors listed[2], 
but this entire community has always proudly carried Einstein on its 
shoulders.

To me, something feels wrong about it coming to such an end, deprecated 
due to the existence of a machine-coded "replacement". Maybe it's 
because, as a software developer and programmer, I enjoy and appreciate 
the craft so much, and now there's just nothing to do.  I should be 
happy - "Hooray, everything works now like we planned", but I'm not.  Is 
it just the fallacy of sunken cost[3] irrationally yelling in my head?

I'm not sure why, but it feels like there's a bit less to look forward to.

If I'm the only one feeling this way, I'll just walk backwards back into 
my hedge and deal with it.  But I'm curious, and I suspect I might not 
be the only one.

-V

[1] 
https://web.archive.org/web/20040908090829/www.wired.com/news/mac/0,2125,64834,00.html

[2] https://github.com/pguyot/Einstein/graphs/contributors?all=1

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunk_cost

On 2026-10-21 11:04, Matthias Melcher wrote:
> There were two or three more features planed for Einstein. However with Daniel's newton-re, there is really no longer a need for the existence of Einstein. newton-re can now run NewtonOS at full speed without emulation and without a ROM. With a matching user interface, it will be far superior to Einstein, performance wise at the least.