On: Ask HN: What tech were you convinced would take the world by storm but didn't?

[krylon]

I once heard somebody talk about analog computers who is old enough to have used them.

The impression I got was that they did work excessively well on a very narrow niche of problems (simulations, mostly). But "programming" them was a huge pain, and for the general purpose arena, they were not useful.

[marcosdumay → krylon]

They would be comparing them with the digital computers of the same time.

There's a reason people used analog computers back them, and there's a reason nobody uses them now. Most of the reason is about how noise interferes with small components, and it's a physical reality that won't go away.