The Story of Mel (1983)

Bonus trivia: those "Raw, unadorned, inscrutable hexadecimal numbers"? Those would not have been the 0-9a-f we're familiar with today, but 0-9fgjkqw[1]!

[1]: http://ed-thelen.org/comp-hist/lgp-30-man.html#R4.13

Re: The Story of Mel (1983)

#8

Post by NickRandom » Tue, Aug 09, 2022, 9:32 AM UTC

Worthwhile checking out some of the other stories in the parent directory (https://www.cs.utah.edu/~elb/folklore/).

Thanks for posting this, it made for a fun read and some of the other ones (especially the Robin Hood and Friar Tuck story) made me chuckle.

Re: The Story of Mel (1983)

#9

Post by dcminter » Tue, Aug 09, 2022, 9:33 AM UTC

avodonosov wrote: post #3

Maybe not really appropriate for a site called Hacker _News_. The site name suggests something new should be posted.

I showed "The Story of Mel" to my Dad a couple of years before he died. He started as a software developer some time in the 60s. He'd never seen it before, very much enjoyed it, and noted that it reminded him of a few people he'd worked with back then.

"New" is a matter of perspective.

I'm sure there are plenty of HN readers who haven't seen it before, and I'm happy to see dupes of high quality stuff pop up from time to time. I was just thinking earlier that it was time for someone to re-post "No Silver Bullet" soon. Perhaps I'll do it myself it nobody else takes the hint.

Re: The Story of Mel (1983)

#10

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Aug 09, 2022, 9:34 AM UTC

avodonosov wrote: post #3

Maybe not really appropriate for a site called Hacker _News_. The site name suggests something new should be posted.

[deleted]