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Some of the error messages produced by Apple's MPW C compiler (2006)

cs.cmu.edu

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Re: Some of the error messages produced by Apple's MPW C compiler (2006)

#71

Post by LoganDark »

smoldesu wrote: post #67
LoganDark wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is even more true today, because Apple Silicon Macs are able to store twice the amount of information in the same amount of memory, meaning that a paltry 8GB configuration can store 16GB of FizzBuzz boilerplate, 4 Google Chrome tabs, or 20% of the average node_modules.

I don't think that feature is exclusive to Apple Silicon, or Macs.

It's a joke (clearly not a very good one) based on my experience that when Apple first offered only 8GB of RAM on the first ASi Macs, everyone's response was that Apple Silicon can simply store more data in the same amount of memory or something. Back when I used macOS on Intel, 16GB was relatively comfortable, but I can't imagine that switching to ARM would magically halve memory requirements.

(Yes, the Intel Mac had memory compression as well. And my Windows 11 PC also has memory compression, but only if you also enable swap because Microsoft says "fuck you".)

Re: Some of the error messages produced by Apple's MPW C compiler (2006)

#72

Post by tedunangst »

tyg13 wrote: post #62
zer8k wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Void pointers refer to anything and nothing. They are everything and all encompassing. What is pointed to by the void pointer could be what you want or it could be another universe. Dereferencing a void pointer has no meaning. The compiler can do anything it wants because it doesn't know how to interpret the memory. It could give you the correct thing, it could warp a civilization in from a distant planet, or it coul…

You're correct, although I'm fairly sure dereferencing a `void*` is a compile error on all but the most ancient and non-conforming compilers. I'm not even sure what it _could_ compile to, given that `void` has no size.

void * was introduced after char * had been the pre-standard way of addressing any memory. Compilers of the era would let you use void * like char *, because it made it easier to change char * into void *.

Re: Some of the error messages produced by Apple's MPW C compiler (2006)

#73

Post by hyperdimension »

mastry wrote: post #52
omoikane wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> picture of a cat I couldn't find this elusive picture of a cat on archive.org, but I found this dog instead: https://web.archive.org/web/20030113144310/https://www.amazo... June 2016 appears to be when Amazon adopted the current error pages with the large dog images. https://web.archive.org/web/20160612232820/http://www.amazon...

Maybe this is it? http://telcontar.net/Screenshots/worldwidewonk/Amazon-404-eh...

Wow, now that is a screenshot full of nostalgia... Nice find.

Re: Some of the error messages produced by Apple's MPW C compiler (2006)

#74

Post by II2II »

cschmidt wrote: post #68
II2II wrote: post #33

Tangential to the content of the page: I really enjoyed how many MPW utilities generated output, including error messages, in the form of commands. Your terminal was an editor buffer, so you could cursor up (or click) on the appropriate line then press something like cmd-enter to pull up the file in question (among other things).

I think it was just the enter key to execute the selected text.

You're probably correct. I forgot that Apple labelled the enter key as return on the alphanumeric part of the keyboard and as enter on the numeric keypad. I recall some software (possibly MPW) treating cmd-return as enter. Or something to that effect. It has been about 20 years!

Re: Some of the error messages produced by Apple's MPW C compiler (2006)

#75

Post by jonhohle »

bazbamduck wrote: post #25
jonhohle wrote: post #2

I miss this kind of playfulness in computing. When I was at Amazon my manager told me that several years earlier he was responsible for updating the 404 page so he scanned a picture of a cat his daughter drew and made that the body of the page. In 2009 when I started, that was still the image, but at some point someone must have noticed and replaced it with a stock photo of a dog. The asset was still called kayli-kit…

Go load www.amazon.com and check the source right after :)

That's wonderful to see. Also interesting to see the site performance comments around different components.

Another anecdote: somewhere in that time period we (Prime) were using comments for various metadata and pre-release and post-deployment checks would verify the comments were in place. The team responsible for the edge proxies decided they were going to rewrite all the HTML going out on the fly to remove extraneous comments and whitespace in an effort to reduce page-size.

In the middle of testing a release all of the tests related to a particular feature started failing and (I believe) different devs were getting different HTML on their systems (the feature wasn't rolled out to every session). Our QA team was extremely pedantic in the best way possible and wouldn't allow the release to continue until testing could complete, so we had to track down the responsible parties and get them to dial down their transformation. They eventually tried again without stripping comments, but I can't imagine much was saved after compression without much of anything removed (they might have been rewriting other tags as well).

Re: Some of the error messages produced by Apple's MPW C compiler (2006)

#76

Post by varun_ch »

jonhohle wrote: post #2

I miss this kind of playfulness in computing. When I was at Amazon my manager told me that several years earlier he was responsible for updating the 404 page so he scanned a picture of a cat his daughter drew and made that the body of the page. In 2009 when I started, that was still the image, but at some point someone must have noticed and replaced it with a stock photo of a dog. The asset was still called kayli-kit…

This is really cool! The filename on certain Amazon 404 pages (eg. https://www.amazon.co.jp/404) is still kailey-kitty.gif (but the image has been replaced with a standard icon).

I also found this comment from him on a blog: https://www.davebellous.com/2006/09/25/what-the/#comment-290...

Re: Some of the error messages produced by Apple's MPW C compiler (2006)

#77

Post by tom_ »

semi-extrinsic wrote: post #61
ShadowBanThis01 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The soldered-in SSD is worse, though. The SSD WILL wear out, so then you get to throw away your Mac?

But how quickly though? Do we know the write endurance of the Mac SSDs? I'm not a Mac fanboy by any means. But SSD write endurance has become ridiculous. Even on a cheap-ish read-intensive server-class 1 TB NVMe SSD (~$300) you get around 1 petabyte total write endurance, meaning you can write essentially the entire contents of the disk every day for 5 years and still be within the warranty. That is orders of magnitu…

I've got two Macbook Pros - a 2014 15" (500 GB SSD) and a 2015 13" (1 TB SSD). Both are still going. I can't imagine newer Macs are worse. I'd be more concerned about replacing the battery!

Re: Some of the error messages produced by Apple's MPW C compiler (2006)

#78

Post by jonhohle »

catiopatio wrote: post #28
AnonC wrote: post #21

> "Symbol table full - fatal heap error; please go buy a RAM upgrade from your local Apple dealer" Ah, the old times when one could purchase a RAM upgrade or upgrade RAM after buying a computer. Now this would be: "Symbol table full - fatal heap error; please go buy a new Mac with more RAM"

I understand the arguments for unified RAM on a SoC, but it’s still a shame; even the new Mac Pro doesn’t have RAM slots.

The Mac Pro missing RAM slots was disappointing to me. Performance uber alles and all that, but upgradability has benefits as well. Until Apple started soldering RAM, I always did aftermarket RAM upgrades, and even recently doubled the RAM on a 12 year-old file server.

Re: Some of the error messages produced by Apple's MPW C compiler (2006)

#79

Post by ezequiel-garzon »

mastry wrote: post #52
omoikane wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> picture of a cat I couldn't find this elusive picture of a cat on archive.org, but I found this dog instead: https://web.archive.org/web/20030113144310/https://www.amazo... June 2016 appears to be when Amazon adopted the current error pages with the large dog images. https://web.archive.org/web/20160612232820/http://www.amazon...

Maybe this is it? http://telcontar.net/Screenshots/worldwidewonk/Amazon-404-eh...

Thanks to both of you for this heartwarming bit. How do you go about finding something like that?
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