41–50 of 84 posts
Is someone in the US government really still using an IBM 7074? Really? I'm shocked. How could that possibly be cost-effective? Actually, this blog post makes the story clearer: http://nikhilism.com/post/2016/systems-we-love/ It isn't a physical IBM 7074. When it came time to migrate from 7074 to S/360, rather than rewriting their 7074 software, they just wrote a 7074 emulator for S/360. And, it sounds like, they are…
When I first saw the Chromebook, my thought was that Larry Ellison's 1998 dream of a network computer thin terminal had come true. It's smarter than a true thin terminal, but everything lives in the cloud (err, butt).
That Chrome extension is clbuttic.
> but everything lives in my butt (err, butt).
I had to open the comment in porn (er, incognito) mode in order to parse it :D.
I'm still struggling with my own legacy code problem. I'm reviving an old LISP program from the early 1980s. Parts of it were written for the original Stanford AI Lab SAIL system in the 1970s. It last ran under Franz LISP in 1986. My current struggle is with one line of code: (defun getenode (l) (cadr l)) That ought to be simple enough. But it's being applied not to a list, but a "hunk". A "hunk" is an obsolete MacLI…
I'm still struggling with my own legacy code problem. I'm reviving an old LISP program from the early 1980s. Parts of it were written for the original Stanford AI Lab SAIL system in the 1970s. It last ran under Franz LISP in 1986. My current struggle is with one line of code: (defun getenode (l) (cadr l)) That ought to be simple enough. But it's being applied not to a list, but a "hunk". A "hunk" is an obsolete MacLI…
Based on †, it sounds like (cadr (hunk (hunk 1 2) 3)) should return 2.
Is the old LISP code available online somewhere? I'm curious to see it.
"It used magnetic-core memory (instead of cathode ray tubes) according to Bellotti" I didn't think magnetic-core memory and CRTs were interchangeable...
I think the implication wasn't that they were interchangeable, but that the machine they were expecting to see used CRTs, and instead, they found it using MCM.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Was it Java that did not deliver improvement, or was it the team? :)
I am inclined to say Java as I have not seen mythical teams who work on Java without whole caboodle of 'Enterprise Apps' culture.
I'm still struggling with my own legacy code problem. I'm reviving an old LISP program from the early 1980s. Parts of it were written for the original Stanford AI Lab SAIL system in the 1970s. It last ran under Franz LISP in 1986. My current struggle is with one line of code: (defun getenode (l) (cadr l)) That ought to be simple enough. But it's being applied not to a list, but a "hunk". A "hunk" is an obsolete MacLI…
There are only a few possibilities for what (cadr hunk) could mean. One way to solve this is to try them all and see which one runs successfully. Based on †, it sounds like (cadr (hunk (hunk 1 2) 3)) should return 2. Is the old LISP code available online somewhere? I'm curious to see it.
I put all the code on Github. The oldest version of each file is exactly what ran in 1986.
The code is delicate. It's a theorem prover, and there's much manipulation of complex data structures, with little explanation of what's going on. The overall theory is documented; this is the original Oppen-Nelson simplifier and there are published papers. But the code has few comments.
>> It was at this point that the seasoned data architects in the department began expressing their exasperation. “15 years ago, everybody was telling us ‘Get off the mainframe, get on AT&T applications, build these thick clients. Mainframes are out.’ And now thick clients are out, and everybody’s moving to APIs and microservices, which basically are very similar to the thin client that a terminal uses to interact wit…
"15 years ago" doesn't sound right. Thick clients were being pushed in mid 90s. But then Clipper Chip plans went south ...
"It used magnetic-core memory (instead of cathode ray tubes) according to Bellotti" I didn't think magnetic-core memory and CRTs were interchangeable...
While magnetic core memory was dominant from 1955 until around 1976, when silicon went mainstream. Machines with MCM were in general use for a long time after that too.
It's possible the interviewer confused the widespread use of CRT in pre-flat screen monitors. (Shrug, maybe CRT was very briefly mentioned? who knows?!)
Williams Tube memory is pretty interesting BTW. Worth taking a look at Selectron memory too. You know, for fun.
"It used magnetic-core memory (instead of cathode ray tubes) according to Bellotti" I didn't think magnetic-core memory and CRTs were interchangeable...