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I always do look enviously at back when you had to figure out sort of bootstrappy ways to solve problems due to inherent limitations of the hardware instead of just sitting there gluing frameworks together like a loser.
Am I wrong or was programming just way cooler back then?
I’d say that garbage collection was key to large scale software reuse as if you didn’t have garbage collection you’d have to have a lot of cooperation between libraries and applications (how does the application know the library doesn’t need a piece of memory or vice versa?)
Like not having enough or managing the memory you do have? I’d say that garbage collection was key to large scale software reuse as if you didn’t have garbage collection you’d have to have a lot of cooperation between libraries and applications (how does the application know the library doesn’t need a piece of memory or vice versa?)
It still is cool because of memory and CPU (power) and code constraints for embedded computing.
It still is cool because of memory and CPU (power) and code constraints for embedded computing.
I do want to get into that but where I am at embedded computing jobs are kind of rare. I do like programming in C quite a bit.
I don’t miss low level programming in a work context at all.
Memory mattered. Ditto CPU cycles, disk, and network bandwidth. (Not that your code could count on there being a network, in a lot of cases.) Security wasn't a Garden of Eden...but now that can feel more like being a night-shift ICU nurse during a COVID surge that never ends. And the software stack under your code was orders of magnitude smaller, and slower-changing. These days - that can feel like you aren't a programmer, but instead a Wall Street attorney who's trying to pilot some giga-corporate merger through the shifting regulatory and political obstacles in 37 different countries.