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The Story of Mel (1983)

cs.utah.edu

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Re: The Story of Mel (1983)

#61

Post by metabagel »

Suzuran wrote: post #55
billpg wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some things never change. One of my first HN comments got me four down-votes for much the same comment. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=679208 Back then, I was so new it bumped me down into negative score. I almost made a new account but decided to keep it and try and rebuild my damaged rep. Nowadays, my score in the thousands, but Mel still sounds awful.

I'd be interested to know exactly why; Is it because he doesn't obey his bosses when told to make the program cheat, or just the way it's framed as some kind of testosterone caveman thing?

Obviously difficult to work with and unprofessional. Utilized programming side effects which obscured the intent of the code to such an extent that he unintentionally reversed the logic of the test he was supposed to implement.

Re: The Story of Mel (1983)

#62

Post by dhosek »

userbinator wrote: post #57
oaiey wrote: post #30

In 1997 I was doing an apprenticeship. It had a very well organized curriculum and well thought courses. One course was based on 8080/8085 cpu. You know what they gave us: A development board (roughly the size of a modern mainboard) with onboard hex keyboard 0-9a-f and 3-4 function keys (halt, run, write at ... something like that). And a book and templated paper. So the exercises, 3-4 hours every week, were: Impleme…

I can still "sight-read" much of the x86 instructions from a hexdump or even (E-)ASCII --- the ISA is much easier to memorise and more regular in octal. This is a habit I acquired from the days when I did a lot of binary patching, for various reasons, and good disassemblers weren't yet easy to come by.

A couple years ago, a junior dev was absolutely astonished at my ability to interpret a hex dump as ASCII. I don’t think I remember any numeric opcodes for anything.

Re: The Story of Mel (1983)

#63

Post by dhosek »

dhosek wrote: post #62
userbinator wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can still "sight-read" much of the x86 instructions from a hexdump or even (E-)ASCII --- the ISA is much easier to memorise and more regular in octal. This is a habit I acquired from the days when I did a lot of binary patching, for various reasons, and good disassemblers weren't yet easy to come by.

A couple years ago, a junior dev was absolutely astonished at my ability to interpret a hex dump as ASCII. I don’t think I remember any numeric opcodes for anything.

Oh wait, I did correctly remember that $20 was JSR in 6502 assembly.

Re: The Story of Mel (1983)

#64

Post by wpietri »

lbriner wrote: post #18

Sadly we have strayed to the other extreme. From "every instruction is precious" right over to, "who cares how many instructions I use?" Nowadays, desktop apps which started in an instant 20 years ago, seem to take several seconds even before they are even doing anything useful like loading a project or whatever. Even things like Visual Studio looking through the MRU project list can take 10 seconds (probably a threa…

I don't remember the norm being "desktop apps which started in an instant 20 years ago". Or 30, for that matter. Do you have any data for that? E.g., when I think back over launching Photoshop over the decades, I remember loading screens all the way through.

My take is that launch times are on average better but still not great. And I think that's because something else that's constant is that programs first get written for the convenience of the programmer, and then optimized until people stop complaining about the speed.

The waste of resources bothers me too, of course. But on the other hand, computing resources have become radically cheaper while programmer time has gotten much more expensive. While at the same time, writing software had gotten radically more complex. So I suspect me getting bothered here is sort of like when my grandmother, who grew up in the Great Depression, got bothered when I didn't wash and reuse aluminum foil.

Re: The Story of Mel (1983)

#65

Post by usefulcat »

billpg wrote: post #52
billpg wrote: post #28

I hope I never have to work with someone like him. He sounds awful.

Some things never change. One of my first HN comments got me four down-votes for much the same comment. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=679208 Back then, I was so new it bumped me down into negative score. I almost made a new account but decided to keep it and try and rebuild my damaged rep. Nowadays, my score in the thousands, but Mel still sounds awful.

If you're going to post an unpopular opinion, I think the only way to avoid downvotes is to at least make your comment interesting or novel in some way. Merely saying "I don't like X" is neither.

Re: The Story of Mel (1983)

#66

Post by stakkur »

I remember typing in hex programs from Compute! magazine to my C64. It would take a long time and, of course, I made at least one error along the way and had to start over.

Re: The Story of Mel (1983)

#67

Post by cestith »

wazoox wrote: post #32

To be complete on old programmer's lore, don't miss "Real programmers don't use PASCAL": https://www.ecb.torontomu.ca/~elf/hack/realmen.html And of course, "The rise of 'Worse is Better'": https://web.stanford.edu/class/cs240/old/sp2014/readings/wor...

The Story of Mel was likely in direct response to "Real programmers don't use PASCAL", or potentially another very similar "Real Programmers" writing.

Re: The Story of Mel (1983)

#68

Post by wpietri »

zozbot234 wrote: post #42
ratww wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

+1000. But in my experience the trend started not with developers, but with the other people around them: Product Managers, Designers, Engineering Managers, Steve Jobs wannabes. There was an obvious disdain for users, and they were seen as complete dunces that should be shepherded to whatever new functionality happened to pop up their heads. There was also a complete disdain for the medium: designers used to print de…

> There was an obvious disdain for users The disdain for "lusers" came from BOFH sysadmin types, well before it was adopted by the non-"tech", business-focused folks.

I think those are totally different kinds of disdain.

The former is generalized misanthropy plus specific hostility to the individuals who bother them.

The latter is more akin to the feudal lord or the cattle farmer: a lack of empathy plus an eagerness to stuff one's own pockets such that they build exploitative systems.

Sysadmins ultimately just wanted to be left alone to pursue their techie interests. But the MBA types are the opposite. You can't have an upper class without a set of lower classes to provide you with income and feelings of power.

Re: The Story of Mel (1983)

#70

Post by egypturnash »

cestith wrote: post #67
wazoox wrote: post #32

To be complete on old programmer's lore, don't miss "Real programmers don't use PASCAL": https://www.ecb.torontomu.ca/~elf/hack/realmen.html And of course, "The rise of 'Worse is Better'": https://web.stanford.edu/class/cs240/old/sp2014/readings/wor...

The Story of Mel was likely in direct response to "Real programmers don't use PASCAL", or potentially another very similar "Real Programmers" writing.

A recent article devoted to the macho side of programming made the bald and unvarnished statement:

Real Programmers write in FORTRAN.

- the first lines of The Story Of Mel

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