141–150 of 382 posts
Edit: really appreciate the effort being put into preserving this software history btw
It looks like "brain damaged" was the developer's go-to insult when frustrated :D 2024-04-25 19:35 ~/sort/dl/MS-DOS % grep -nri 'brain[ -]damage' . ./v4.0/src/DOS/STRIN.ASM:70:; Brain-damaged TP ignored ^F in case his BIOS did not flush the ./v4.0/src/DOS/PATH.ASM:24:; MZ 19 Jan 1983 Brain damaged applications rely on success ./v4.0/src/DOS/FCBIO.ASM:28:; MZ 15 Dec 1983 Brain damaged programs close FCBs multiple ./v4…
Let's bring back those DOS 4.0 period sayings. Does this mean if you happen to be talking to BillG you could talk about brain damaged programs and he'd nod appreciatively?
Bill Cosby's "Brain Damage" bit, from the album "Himself": 1982
DOS 4.0: 1988
Those comments also could have also sat in the tree for a few years.
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unalive() offends me, let’s do sunset() instead
sunset() triggers me due to all the times I've seen companies "sunset" APIs only to still have them in production 5 years later. Let's change it to cancelled()
How about goodbye()?
I appreciate the work in getting this open sourced but I find it telling that this had to be done through an outside motivator. There seems to be no internal "ticking clock" to get some of these things out in to the open. That's fine no one is owed the source code for this stuff or anything, but it would be nice if there was more interest on the side of the companies to get some of their formative history out so peop…
For some insight, look how people are combing for curse words/ devs making jokes about people being brain damaged etc. There is no upside for the company, and all that has to happen is some unsavory politically incorrect joke to get missed from sanitization and the are on the cancelled chopping block.
I guess now we can finally try to understand what went wrong with the multitasking attempt.
Graphics. Managers wanted "windowing systems" as well as multitasking. People who just wanted mutitasking DOS had DesqView and ... "concurrent"? was it? i forget. I wrote TSR's that snatched cycles off the timer interrupt and rode 21h for opportunity to flush buffers to/from disk.
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sunset() triggers me due to all the times I've seen companies "sunset" APIs only to still have them in production 5 years later. Let's change it to cancelled()
cancelled() makes it seem as if PHP is a sexual predator – which may be the case, but as a matter of course... How about goodbye()?
It looks like "brain damaged" was the developer's go-to insult when frustrated :D 2024-04-25 19:35 ~/sort/dl/MS-DOS % grep -nri 'brain[ -]damage' . ./v4.0/src/DOS/STRIN.ASM:70:; Brain-damaged TP ignored ^F in case his BIOS did not flush the ./v4.0/src/DOS/PATH.ASM:24:; MZ 19 Jan 1983 Brain damaged applications rely on success ./v4.0/src/DOS/FCBIO.ASM:28:; MZ 15 Dec 1983 Brain damaged programs close FCBs multiple ./v4…
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Graphics. Managers wanted "windowing systems" as well as multitasking. People who just wanted mutitasking DOS had DesqView and ... "concurrent"? was it? i forget. I wrote TSR's that snatched cycles off the timer interrupt and rode 21h for opportunity to flush buffers to/from disk.
> I wrote TSR's that snatched cycles off the timer interrupt We've all been there. How else could you get anything interesting done back in the day?
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Windows 2000 was part of the professional NT line, though, and was the companion of Me for the millennium releases. As far as I know, 2000 wasn't marketed to home users. I think what the comment you replied to is saying is the the transition away from DOS wasn't completed for both professional and home markets until XP, which unified everything under NT for all markets.
Around the year 2000, I was studying computer science at a university. Most of their PC's ran on Windows 3.1. I was using it at home. But one day, Microsoft sent me an offer: I could purchase the student release of Windows 2000 workstation for a mere $25.00. I went for it, and found it better than the Windows NT nap-sayers at school said. I don't know why I was contacted. Probbably because of other Microsoft programs…
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> It's just that there are more descriptive and neutral terms available to us, so why not use them? Because it's boring.
Walter, you and I have known each other for a long time. Not in person; we've never met. But through our interactions here on HN. I have a lot of respect for you and for everything you have accomplished. So I have to ask you directly: Is being "boring" or not the way we should decide how to express ourselves? Regarding a "quick test" vs. a "sanity test". Instead of judging this on what is "boring", why can't we make…
A "quick test" implies almost nothing, other than it is faster than some other, unnamed test out there. Is a quick test good or is it bad? No way to tell. This term, quick test, it does not inform.
On the other hand, a sanity test, well, it is more evocative. You definitely want to pass a sanity test.
If you reach back to your psychology classes, they talked about a four-part test that is useful for determine if a behavior is sane or not.
1) Is it abnormal? Unusual? Out of the ordinary? for the situation.
2) Is it unjustifiable, unreasonable given the circumstances?
3) Is it counter-productive? Which is to say, does the behavior serve the individual, or does it in fact make things worse? Or simply do nothing?
4) (and this is where my memory is fuzzy) I think it involves personal distress. For the life of me I can't find it via Google and it annoys me.
Now, interestingly, a sanity test matches the first three! (The fourth, well, there is no "I" in the program to be distressed) In programming, a sanity test looks for something abnormal, not reasonable for the program, and represents a state that won't get us the desired output. In short, it's highly congruent to the other context for sanity.
This term, it communicates, and in a way "quick test" does not.
In general, one of the main critiques of political correctness which few really notice is that the new term is less specific and less useful, that it fails at communicating. Consider when "Oriental" fell off of the euphemism treadmill for "Asian." We all knew that the first term referred to a particular part of the world, from the Latin for "east." (Ex lux orient and so on) "Asian," however, could refer to people in Russia or people in India, but nobody in the US does (I note in the UK India does get the "Asian" pass). So here the new term is less specific and less useful, and is confusing to boot because we deliberately ignore parts of Asia when using the term "Asian."
If you want something to supplant "sanity test," you gotta work harder for it than "quick test."