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How I coded in 1985

blog.jgc.org

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Re: How I coded in 1985

#21

Post by reeses »

edw519 wrote: post #5

That headline got me to thinking... Date: Monday, April 29, 1985 Age: 29 Location: Santa Ana, California. Company: electronics manufacturer setup: dumb black & green 24x80 14" CRT terminal Hardware: Honeywell mini OS: Honeywell proprietary DBMS: Pick (Ultimate Flavor) Language: BASIC App: Work Order Processing (I wrote from scratch.) Date: Monday, April 29, 2013 Age: 57 Location: Miami, Florida Company: aerospace man…

Holy crap. I'm the annoying chubby suit bringing in all the Java, Rails, and ecommerce people.

Small world.

Re: How I coded in 1985

#22

Post by buro9 »

Brain debugger.

I honed mine early enough that the most I need from a program is a few Sprintf statements just to give the brain debugger some context when the application is dealing with external data or data transformation.

I personally find it hard to turn off the brain debugger and rely on software. Originally this was because you'd very much be used to the debugger being wrong. As in, "Ah, but in this case the debugger thinks X but Y is the case", and later just because the brain debugger had become so effective that not using it seemed like a lot of hard work for little extra gain.

How other programmers visualise or handle code in their brain, and how they put together new functionality in their head, is deeply fascinating. Even if you have self-awareness enough to grasp the basics of how you do it, you can be reasonably sure that each of us does it slightly differently.

Re: How I coded in 1985

#24

Post by dspillett »

pinaceae wrote: post #8
edw519 wrote: post #5

That headline got me to thinking... Date: Monday, April 29, 1985 Age: 29 Location: Santa Ana, California. Company: electronics manufacturer setup: dumb black & green 24x80 14" CRT terminal Hardware: Honeywell mini OS: Honeywell proprietary DBMS: Pick (Ultimate Flavor) Language: BASIC App: Work Order Processing (I wrote from scratch.) Date: Monday, April 29, 2013 Age: 57 Location: Miami, Florida Company: aerospace man…

but isn't it questionable that you're (seemingly) writing the same stuff, from scratch, for 28 years now? shouldn't there be a work order processing standard solution for aerospace by now? like an engineer re-inventing the process to build bricks anytime a new building is requested. industry observation, not personal.

> shouldn't there be a work order processing standard solution for aerospace by now?

There are probably several, all mutually incompatible in some way, and chances are every company picks bits from each to make their own "local" standard (a local standard that gets worked every time the name associated with a C*O title changes).

Sometimes we are not in a position to control the constant wheel evolution and just have to get on with it & accept the paycheck.

Re: How I coded in 1985

#25

Post by danso »

It's kind of useful to write out code by hand, or at least pseudo-code...I'm not a neuroscientist but I wouldn't be surprised if it turns on a different part of the brain. Last week I was sitting in the park with nothing to do and I reflexively pulled out my iPod to play Sudoku on it. Since it was one of our first nice days I felt bad about that so I just wrote out the Sudoku grid on a pad of paper and solved it from there. It was surprisingly difficult, even though it was an easy puzzle (the iOS version highlights which minigrids on the main grid that a given number appears in for starters).

Anyway, anytime I think about what a pain in the ass writing, or even just typing out code can be, I refer to the chapter in iWoz in which, lacking development software at the time, he "wrote out the software [for Little Brick Out] with pen and paper and then hand assembled the instructions into 4096 bytes of raw machine code for the 6502"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integer_BASIC

Re: How I coded in 1985

#26

Post by tterrace »

That's really fantastic that he was able to save his work from 28 years ago. I really wish I had the foresight to do the same from only five years ago, though I expect the result would be less like unearthing buried treasure and more like finding what stinks in the fridge.

Re: How I coded in 1985

#27

Post by Swizec »

edw519 wrote: post #5

That headline got me to thinking... Date: Monday, April 29, 1985 Age: 29 Location: Santa Ana, California. Company: electronics manufacturer setup: dumb black & green 24x80 14" CRT terminal Hardware: Honeywell mini OS: Honeywell proprietary DBMS: Pick (Ultimate Flavor) Language: BASIC App: Work Order Processing (I wrote from scratch.) Date: Monday, April 29, 2013 Age: 57 Location: Miami, Florida Company: aerospace man…

How did I know this story would have your comment and it would be up top? :)

To still add something to the discussion -> I never coded on a black&green CRT, but I did learn programming on an environment doing 24x80 16colour ... graphics? Text graphics. (this was ~1994)

It was fun. For the first few years of my computing experience I never really left DOS and kept trying to reproduce the shiny Windows stuff in there. I still think that was better and more fun than when I briefly tried learning how to make "real applications" before jumping ship to Web.

Re: How I coded in 1985

#28

Post by jgrahamc »

tterrace wrote: post #26

That's really fantastic that he was able to save his work from 28 years ago. I really wish I had the foresight to do the same from only five years ago, though I expect the result would be less like unearthing buried treasure and more like finding what stinks in the fridge.

I saved a lot of stuff: http://blog.jgc.org/2009/08/in-which-i-switch-on-30-year-old...

Re: How I coded in 1985

#29

Post by seanwoods »

edw519 wrote: post #10
pinaceae wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

but isn't it questionable that you're (seemingly) writing the same stuff, from scratch, for 28 years now? shouldn't there be a work order processing standard solution for aerospace by now? like an engineer re-inventing the process to build bricks anytime a new building is requested. industry observation, not personal.

I'm not writing the same stuff. I've written over a thousand different custom applications using the same technology . That was my point. This environment is so tried and true and so effective, it still kicks ass after 28 years. Pretty amazing when you think about how much has changed. shouldn't there be a work order processing standard solution for aerospace by now? I'm sure there is. Just like there are blog, websi…

+1 for Pick. I've met several people who were/are Pick devotees. Also heard stories about how Dick Pick was kind of crazy.
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