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How I coded in 1985

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Re: How I coded in 1985

#61

Post by arethuza »

jacquesm wrote: post #45
alan_cx wrote: post #43

Finally, some programming this old fart recognises. Why did it all get so complicated? Yeah, I know. Rose tinted and all that.

> Why did it all get so complicated? Two words: 'the web'. Slightly longer: we're re-inventing the wheel through a very roundabout path, I think right now we've gone back in time to roughly the mainframe area, it won't be long before someone will invent the mini computer all over again only this time it will be a local cluster in a box. Next after that the PC, a 'personal cluster' with a few 100 nodes the size of the…

And it's not the first time the mainframe has been re-invented - I remember sitting through a presentation on the technical architecture of SAP (don't laugh) and I thought "it's a software mainframe".

Re: How I coded in 1985

#62

Post by bri3d »

The mental debugger is definitely one of the tools I'm glad I developed early.

For me, it was by reverse engineering. I started cracking software and eventually moved on to white-hat black box security auditing, and that quickly taught me how to evaluate execution flow mentally.

I find that even though I'm writing high-level Ruby web apps now, my ability to rapidly follow code around in my head lets me debug more quickly and effectively than many of my co-workers.

I firmly recommend trying reverse-engineering for anyone who hasn't - it will forcibly provide a lot of the same metal execution mapping abilities while feeling more relevant than writing machine code or assembler out on a piece of paper. And once you learn the basics, everything transfers back up to higher-level languages pretty well (with the exception of mental hex arithmetic, which will still come in handy as soon as you segfault your high-level language's runtime). Plus, when reverse-engineering, you can't fall back or get frustrated and use a compiler - unless you have an IDA + HexRays license for some reason, you're stuck figuring things out yourself.

As a side-note, it's always fun watching my dad work - he's an oldschool mainframe guy and he'll sometimes solve common setup issues using JCL or REXX stuff with a modified date sometime in the late 1980s.

Re: How I coded in 1985

#63

Post by marshray »

SoftwareMaven wrote: post #38
danso wrote: post #25

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…

I agree with you. I think the physical motion of writing is involved in the process, activating neurons that just flicking fingers doesn't. Would be fascinating to see it in an fMRI.

There is a psychiatric condition known as 'graphomania' in which one has an obsessive compulsion to write, the content being secondary in importantce. So it's conceivable that such a structure in the brain exists and can become overstimulated.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphomania

Re: How I coded in 1985

#64

Post by hnriot »

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 can you not go crazy doing the same thing over and over? My first commercial software project was in BASIC, back on a Commodore PET, it was a billing app for a shared telex system, but there's not way on earth I'd want to be still using BASIC, or Pick for that matter. The one constant for me over the years has been Unix (from Apollo, to HP UX, to Sun to Linux) but if you try new tech stacks you'd never want to go back to systems from 40+ years ago.

While I think there's money to be made in maintaining those old systems, I would just go insane not keeping up with technology and using modern stacks. CS has progressed for a reason, the level of abstraction today is so much higher that we don't have to write from scratch all the time, there are well tried and tested components.

Setup=Windows PC && OS=Unix, doesn't seem to make much sense, unless you mean Windows as a terminal (putty et al.)

Now, back to Python...

Re: How I coded in 1985

#65

Post by kps »

Not to go all Yorkshire, but I used to dream of having a KIM-1. My first computer — the best thing I could afford — was a Quest Super Elf [ http://www.oldcomputermuseum.com/super_elf.html ] with 256 bytes of RAM, and a processor on which a recursive subroutine call took 16 instructions.

On the other hand, by 1985 I was doing QA for a 64-bit Unix environment.

Re: How I coded in 1985

#67

Post by D9u »

Swizec wrote: post #27
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.…

My story is similar to yours, even the year 1994.

I was totally engrossed in writing custom batch files using ANSI.SYS escape sequences to create text "graphics."

Re: How I coded in 1985

#68

Post by jekub »

kps wrote: post #65

Not to go all Yorkshire, but I used to dream of having a KIM-1. My first computer — the best thing I could afford — was a Quest Super Elf [ http://www.oldcomputermuseum.com/super_elf.html ] with 256 bytes of RAM, and a processor on which a recursive subroutine call took 16 instructions. On the other hand, by 1985 I was doing QA for a 64-bit Unix environment.

You're joking, this was a wonderful machine. Especially the CDP1802 processor with its ability to use any register as a PC. I've very nice memory with this chip.

Re: How I coded in 1985

#69

Post by edw519 »

hnriot wrote: post #64
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 can you not go crazy doing the same thing over and over? My first commercial software project was in BASIC, back on a Commodore PET, it was a billing app for a shared telex system, but there's not way on earth I'd want to be still using BASIC, or Pick for that matter. The one constant for me over the years has been Unix (from Apollo, to HP UX, to Sun to Linux) but if you try new tech stacks you'd never want to go…

How can you not go crazy doing the same thing over and over?

Because I'm not doing the same thing over and over. I'm just using the same technology. I rarely encounter things I can't do with it. I love Pick more than anything else I've ever used.

but there's not way on earth I'd want to be still using BASIC, or Pick for that matter

Pick is almost like a cult and for good reason. It's incredibly elegant, simple, and powerful. Most Pick programmers, even after learning newer technologies, still love Pick and use it whenever practical.

but if you try new tech stacks you'd never want to go back to systems from 40+ years ago

Exactly the opposite of my experience. I've tried many tech stacks and have come to appreciate their pros and cons. But I love coming back to "old faithful". With Pick, I spend most of my time on the problem at hand, not the tech stack. Not so true for many more modern technologies.

I would just go insane not keeping up with technology and using modern stacks.

I never said I didn't keep up. I do and I love to. The thing that would make me go insane: not having fresh customers with fresh problems.

CS has progressed for a reason

Make no mistake about it; the biggest reason has been the internet. So much CRUD technology is so powerful and stable, there hasn't been as much need for "progress".

the level of abstraction today is so much higher that we don't have to write from scratch all the time

I never write from scratch. I use the same 30 or 40 building blocks for every project.

there are well tried and tested components

I'd say that Pick's 40 years and millions of apps make it well tried and tested, too.

unless you mean Windows as a terminal (putty et al.)

I do. Putty on my left, Firefox on my right.

Now, back to Python...

Oy.

Re: How I coded in 1985

#70

Post by pjmlp »

rayiner wrote: post #60
verandaguy wrote: post #53

As a relatively new (5 or so years experience) programmer, 1985 sounds like hell.

Software development basically peaked in the mid 1980's. Macintosh Common Lisp circa 1987: http://basalgangster.macgui.com/RetroMacComputing/The_Long_V... , specifically: http://basalgangster.macgui.com/RetroMacComputing/The_Long_V... Firebug circa 2013: http://getfirebug.com/logging , specifically http://getfirebug.com/img/logging/consoleDir.png

Sometimes I wonder how software would be today if Smalltalk or Lisp environments had become mainstream.

Oh well.

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