My code was eventually taken by competent programmers and converted to C++. In fact, they took away my commit privs on my own code.
It was for the best, as I'm particularly horrible at it. I've worked with great programmers, thankfully. I can hack something out but you don't want it in production. I also used to code while drinking, often heavily, and would comment EVERYTHING. I'm not kidding, I mean everything. I have had more lines of comments than of code.
Fortunately, I'm retired. The scary thing is, my code has probably impacted your life. I modeled traffic and eventually also modeled pedestrian traffic. Yup... Fortunately, I hired professionals as soon as it was fiscally viable.
Sweet! I'm currently using an iPad. I usually use open source stuff but not on mobile. I'd love to, but that's not realistic. Android sucks balls, before you ask.
I know the guy who wrote the original printer drivers. I guess some of the code is still in use. These were the old teletype printers, before monitors. I should say he wrote drivers and helped author the spec. I know loads of people!
Kids! LOL There's plenty of room on my lawn, but it's cold and there's wine indoors.
I turn 60 at the end of this month. Yeah, you'd have been there for some great computing years.
I actually hated computers but I was obligated to use them. I used them when they were useless unless you were a programmer. My first exposure was in 1971 on the HP 9100. A few years later, we'd have a mainframe connection to Dartmouth. That was high school. I went to a snooty prep school/boarding school. My next exposure would be in the late seventies. Then, I'd have a TRS 80 and it just goes on from there. At one point, my computer was more expensive than my new car, with all the peripherals.
I hated them. We made our peace in about 2002, about five years before I retired. I worked on some pretty big iron and, truthfully, it sucked for the longest time. I was a DEC shop until Sun bought them and I stuck with Sun and some HP stuff, more or less. We were clustering pretty early on, so we could be agnostic bit I was most happy with the products, price, and support from those three.
I was always on very slow shared machines. vi was the only option. Whenever I'd fire up emacs, I'd get beaten up. It seems strangely wasteful to be writing this on a four-core 32Gb machine.
I paid $100/MB for RAM. I once had to solder 'memory chips' so that I had enough memory to write lowercase letters. I have more compute power, flops, in my house than I had in a whole data center with piped cooling, a network closet, and a half-dozen people working in it. I have more storage space, in just my laptop, than would have been fiscally viable in the year 1999 and would have been a seven digit figure even if I could have figured out a way to make it fit.
I can remember our trade secret was that we had burst the TB of data sets, before Walmart had. It was a series of disk arrays that ran through a cluster of early Sun blade servers. It was state of the art and the total insurance value was well into the seven digit area, just for the hardware.
I have more compute power than that on my desk. I might have more than that on my tablet.
I keep on seeing these changes in C++, but so far most of the features are basically useless and makes C++ even more confusing to use.
An all I wanted is to have a clear error when I made a typing mistake. I still need a day of reading the compiler errors logged to discover that I somehow forgot a simple ';' somewhere out there.
14 comments
0 u/BlockMe 05 Dec 2017 00:52
Gawd, I remember reading the draft versions of C++ when Stroustup was still writing them.
I remember thinking it was a crock of shit when I saw things like ++ is an l-value.
Never used it again. C was the best C.
0 u/TheBuddha [OP] 05 Dec 2017 01:08
My code was eventually taken by competent programmers and converted to C++. In fact, they took away my commit privs on my own code.
It was for the best, as I'm particularly horrible at it. I've worked with great programmers, thankfully. I can hack something out but you don't want it in production. I also used to code while drinking, often heavily, and would comment EVERYTHING. I'm not kidding, I mean everything. I have had more lines of comments than of code.
Fortunately, I'm retired. The scary thing is, my code has probably impacted your life. I modeled traffic and eventually also modeled pedestrian traffic. Yup... Fortunately, I hired professionals as soon as it was fiscally viable.
0 u/BlockMe 05 Dec 2017 02:27
Are you on a smartphone or a laptop? My code is impacting your life.
The great thing about firmware is that it's everywhere and nowhere at the same time.
0 u/TheBuddha [OP] 05 Dec 2017 02:33
Sweet! I'm currently using an iPad. I usually use open source stuff but not on mobile. I'd love to, but that's not realistic. Android sucks balls, before you ask.
I know the guy who wrote the original printer drivers. I guess some of the code is still in use. These were the old teletype printers, before monitors. I should say he wrote drivers and helped author the spec. I know loads of people!
How old are you, if you don't mind my asking?
0 u/BlockMe 05 Dec 2017 02:35
58
0 u/TheBuddha [OP] 05 Dec 2017 02:41
Kids! LOL There's plenty of room on my lawn, but it's cold and there's wine indoors.
I turn 60 at the end of this month. Yeah, you'd have been there for some great computing years.
I actually hated computers but I was obligated to use them. I used them when they were useless unless you were a programmer. My first exposure was in 1971 on the HP 9100. A few years later, we'd have a mainframe connection to Dartmouth. That was high school. I went to a snooty prep school/boarding school. My next exposure would be in the late seventies. Then, I'd have a TRS 80 and it just goes on from there. At one point, my computer was more expensive than my new car, with all the peripherals.
I hated them. We made our peace in about 2002, about five years before I retired. I worked on some pretty big iron and, truthfully, it sucked for the longest time. I was a DEC shop until Sun bought them and I stuck with Sun and some HP stuff, more or less. We were clustering pretty early on, so we could be agnostic bit I was most happy with the products, price, and support from those three.
0 u/BlockMe 05 Dec 2017 07:45
IBM Mainframe, Apple II, a bunch of home brew 8085 machines, DEC, and then PCs and (real) UNIX machines for me.
Minix before Linux. Linux. Attempted to use 386BSD at home.
SunOS on 68030 (Sun 3, I think they were called).
I was there when Mach came out and didn't work. I marvel at the fact that IOS runs Mach and no one knows or cares.
Oh well.
0 u/TheBuddha [OP] 05 Dec 2017 08:18
I love me some alpha systems from DEC.
0 u/BlockMe 05 Dec 2017 08:21
DEC/Alpha but running VMS. Fast, but no vi.
0 u/TheBuddha [OP] 05 Dec 2017 08:29
LOL The only reason people like vi, or vim, is because they have no other choice when they realize they don't know how to exit it.
0 u/BlockMe 05 Dec 2017 09:30
I was always on very slow shared machines. vi was the only option. Whenever I'd fire up emacs, I'd get beaten up. It seems strangely wasteful to be writing this on a four-core 32Gb machine.
0 u/TheBuddha [OP] 05 Dec 2017 09:39
You should like this...
I paid $100/MB for RAM. I once had to solder 'memory chips' so that I had enough memory to write lowercase letters. I have more compute power, flops, in my house than I had in a whole data center with piped cooling, a network closet, and a half-dozen people working in it. I have more storage space, in just my laptop, than would have been fiscally viable in the year 1999 and would have been a seven digit figure even if I could have figured out a way to make it fit.
I can remember our trade secret was that we had burst the TB of data sets, before Walmart had. It was a series of disk arrays that ran through a cluster of early Sun blade servers. It was state of the art and the total insurance value was well into the seven digit area, just for the hardware.
I have more compute power than that on my desk. I might have more than that on my tablet.
0 u/Merchant_Ammonia 05 Dec 2017 01:17
From 98 to 11, nothing.
Now it seems like there's a new one every other year.
0 u/roznak 05 Dec 2017 22:09
I keep on seeing these changes in C++, but so far most of the features are basically useless and makes C++ even more confusing to use.
An all I wanted is to have a clear error when I made a typing mistake. I still need a day of reading the compiler errors logged to discover that I somehow forgot a simple ';' somewhere out there.