The MIDI standard was introduced in 1983 and it's still in use today.

[phf@mastodon.de]

The MIDI standard was introduced in 1983 and it's still in use today. Think about THAT when you design your next protocol. The MIDI standard allows digital musical instruments from different manufacturers to work together, doesn't matter if one is from 1985 and the other is from 2025. Think about THAT when someone tells you to force obsolescence in your product or to violate standards in the name of "innovation" as it were.

Now granted, most big musical instrument companies have been sabotaging MIDI quite a bit in recent years. They've mostly done this by neglecting the requirement for comprehensive documentation of their MIDI implementations. That's terrible, but it's still possible to reverse engineer their shit. At a huge and completely unnecessary cost, but hey, that's what we get.

Most importantly so far no company has dared to release a commercial digital instrument (that I know of) that explicitly does NOT support MIDI. (Although some seem to have only USB MIDI anymore?) Seems like a victory for standards and digital longevity to me.

#standards #midi #permacomputing #plannedobsolescence

[aeva@mastodon.gamedev.place]

@phf teenage engineering omitted it from their pocket operators, which pretty much dooms them to toy status despite being fairly capable instruments