Earlier quoted context omitted.
So that explains it... ;)
How do we explain C++?
Compatibility with C and its toolchain.
“I wrote FAT on an airplane, for heaven's sake”
91–100 of 119 posts
Re: “I wrote FAT on an airplane, for heaven's sake”
#92I had a manager that would repeatedly use this type of remark. We had this particular application that on one could touch without breaking something. It was always a mess. He would often remark "I wrote the whole thing over a weekend, why can't you guys make a tiny little change without breaking it?" One day I finally got fed up with him and replied "Because it's the quality of work you'd expect from an entire applic…
Odds are Gates didn't write the complete code, probably more of the blueprint. Also worth noting- the original implementation of FAT was pretty basic/fundamental. Could one even call it an application?
yeah because writing a filesystem was pretty trivial back then.
Re: “I wrote FAT on an airplane, for heaven's sake”
#93I had a manager that would repeatedly use this type of remark. We had this particular application that on one could touch without breaking something. It was always a mess. He would often remark "I wrote the whole thing over a weekend, why can't you guys make a tiny little change without breaking it?" One day I finally got fed up with him and replied "Because it's the quality of work you'd expect from an entire applic…
I once worked with a founder who would always pull that kind of garbage: "I wrote [simple software with no dependencies or integration requirements] in [N] days! Why is it taking you guys [M] months to write [complex software relying on several 1st and 3rd party libraries, a component that needs to work within a large, old legacy system]? Good on the develop manager!
There was once a programmer who was attached to the court of the warlord of Wu. The warlord asked the programmer: “Which is easier to design: an accounting package or an operating system?”
“An operating system,” replied the programmer.
The warlord uttered an exclamation of disbelief.
“Surely an accounting package is trivial next to the complexity of an operating system,” he said.
“Not so,” said the programmer, “when designing an accounting package, the programmer operates as a mediator between people having different ideas: how it must operate, how its reports must appear, and how it must conform to tax laws.
By contrast, an operating system is not limited by outward appearances. When designing an operating system, the programmer seeks the simplest harmony between machine and ideas. This is why an operating system is easier to design.”
The warlord of Wu nodded and smiled. “That is all good and well,” he said, “but which is easier to debug?”
The programmer made no reply.
— The Tao of Programming, Geoffrey James
Re: “I wrote FAT on an airplane, for heaven's sake”
#94I had a manager that would repeatedly use this type of remark. We had this particular application that on one could touch without breaking something. It was always a mess. He would often remark "I wrote the whole thing over a weekend, why can't you guys make a tiny little change without breaking it?" One day I finally got fed up with him and replied "Because it's the quality of work you'd expect from an entire applic…
Odds are Gates didn't write the complete code, probably more of the blueprint. Also worth noting- the original implementation of FAT was pretty basic/fundamental. Could one even call it an application?
According to Wikipedia:
> The original FAT file system (or FAT structure, as it was called initially) was designed and coded by Marc McDonald,[9] based on a series of discussions between McDonald and Bill Gates.
Re: “I wrote FAT on an airplane, for heaven's sake”
#95Earlier quoted context omitted.
I once worked with a founder who would always pull that kind of garbage: "I wrote [simple software with no dependencies or integration requirements] in [N] days! Why is it taking you guys [M] months to write [complex software relying on several 1st and 3rd party libraries, a component that needs to work within a large, old legacy system]? Good on the develop manager!
There was once a programmer who was attached to the court of the warlord of Wu. The warlord asked the programmer: “Which is easier to design: an accounting package or an operating system?” “An operating system,” replied the programmer. The warlord uttered an exclamation of disbelief. “Surely an accounting package is trivial next to the complexity of an operating system,” he said. “Not so,” said the programmer, “when…
I believe the developers working on Windows Vista, Copland, Taligent and GNU/Hurd would like to have a word with Mr. James.
Re: “I wrote FAT on an airplane, for heaven's sake”
#96Earlier quoted context omitted.
Pen and paper works just fine on a plane and I'm old enough to know that back in those days lots of coding was done that way. At one work place, I spent most of the day away from the computer (terminal) waiting for the operational boys to get their stuff done. I would spend most of my coding day scribbling out code changes onto the fanfold printout.
And today quite a few people complain about having to code on a whiteboard while at a job interview. How times have changed.
For a lot of people, writing on a whiteboard with 4 prospective employers breathing down their neck is totally different than sitting on a plane or in a quiet corner alone with some paper to write on.
Re: “I wrote FAT on an airplane, for heaven's sake”
#97I'm old enough to know he didn't carry a computer on the plane....
According to this, Gates did some of the design, but Marc McDonald, employee #1 at MS, helped with the design, and did the coding in 1977: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_Allocation_Table#Original_... Like a lot of old stories remembered after-the-fact to make a point, it seems that the truth is more complicated.
Re: “I wrote FAT on an airplane, for heaven's sake”
#98I had a manager that would repeatedly use this type of remark. We had this particular application that on one could touch without breaking something. It was always a mess. He would often remark "I wrote the whole thing over a weekend, why can't you guys make a tiny little change without breaking it?" One day I finally got fed up with him and replied "Because it's the quality of work you'd expect from an entire applic…
I once worked with a founder who would always pull that kind of garbage: "I wrote [simple software with no dependencies or integration requirements] in [N] days! Why is it taking you guys [M] months to write [complex software relying on several 1st and 3rd party libraries, a component that needs to work within a large, old legacy system]? Good on the develop manager!
Heh, reminds me of a boss that criticised my work a few months back:
Boss: "Hey antimagic, why haven't you finished that module yet?"
Me: because the code it's interfacing to is a big ball of spaghetti (paraphrasing, because it was the boss in question's code - so I was much more diplomatic)
Boss: "You need to learn to be able to work with other people's code better - I can get in and modify your code easily"
Me:
...
30 seconds later after no reaction...
Me: Yes, I do write fairly clean code. Thank you for noticing.
Re: “I wrote FAT on an airplane, for heaven's sake”
#99Earlier quoted context omitted.
But too young to know writing code and speccing data structures on paper (and/or napkins...) was quite common before airplane-friendly computers were available? (And for a long time after, really; ubiquitous ownership of laptops is a quite recent thing).
I still prefer to write on paper on planes.
Me too - although if it's code, then it's going to more like pseudo code or simply "concepts" and ideas.
Re: “I wrote FAT on an airplane, for heaven's sake”
#100Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not exactly. I am a huge fan of code modularization, but what modularization offers you is the ability to decrease the exponent (i.e. to be devTime^1.01 instead of devTime^2). Some features though (including segment tuning, from the sound of it), will touch a ton of other features regardless of how well you modularize your code. I work at a networking company (Arista), and a lot of the interesting problems come from…
> I am a huge fan of code modularization These days that's no problem. But back then computers were slower and memory much tighter. Making clean interfaces to integrate things made the code too slow and large. On the other hand, projects were smaller, so there was less need.
Or maybe not. The modern version of segment tuning is cache friendliness. Also, with modern virtual memory, function layout may be important in order to minimize page faults.