Interesting they went from 90 minute manual booking time to microseconds. I’m unsure of what the landscape was really like before Unix and such, maybe this was just how software was and everything was a bespoke ordeal. But, it makes me wonder if something less fast could have been “better”. As in, faster to build or easier to maintain/improve, something where we still weren’t talking about wrestling with legacy software that runs the world, those kinds of things.

Even 1 second transaction speed sounds slow today but if it’s replacing a 90 minute manual process I’d rather have that solution now than a microsecond fast solution that takes 5-10 years.