I'm a Relic
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I remember fondly the heyday of computer programmers. We were a curious mix of wizards and gods, silently tapping away at keyboards, shunning those new-fangled mouse things as long as possible. We were cowboys, outlaws, and warrior poets weaving titanic tales of bytes and opcodes, roaming the electronic frontier during the burgeoning era of personal computers, free to do as we pleased, and answering only to our peers. We could cram amazing amounts of code into just 4K of memory because we knew assembly language and we knew the value of just a single byte of memory. We fed off the tit of mother COBOL, and her evil cousin, Fortran, and we praised Pascal for it's type safety, and sheer elegance. We dabbled fearlessly in LISP, mastered the DOS commandline, knew the difference between extended and expanded memory, and decided early on that Windows was Hell incarnate. We taught ourselves C and then C++, still thinking tight and efficient code mattered to someone other than ourselves. We struggled to learn MFC's quirks and eventually began to fondly recall the exquisite and deft code used to circumvent the library's limitations, or as we put it, extend it's usefulness. And then came .Net and cookie-cutter applications. Suddenly we were thrust into the maelstrom of "me-too" programming, populated by 12-year olds who believe that the OS should be web-based, and that have no awareness nor respect for those who came before - those who could write 100,000 line programs from scratch with nothing more than a few hastily scratched verses on a post-it note. I'm a relic. I like the old days. I like the old ways. There. I've said it.
"Why don't you tie a kerosene-soaked rag around your ankles so the ants won't climb up and eat your candy ass..." - Dale Earnhardt, 1997
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"...the staggering layers of obscenity in your statement make it a work of art on so many levels." - Jason Jystad, 10/26/2001 -
I remember fondly the heyday of computer programmers. We were a curious mix of wizards and gods, silently tapping away at keyboards, shunning those new-fangled mouse things as long as possible. We were cowboys, outlaws, and warrior poets weaving titanic tales of bytes and opcodes, roaming the electronic frontier during the burgeoning era of personal computers, free to do as we pleased, and answering only to our peers. We could cram amazing amounts of code into just 4K of memory because we knew assembly language and we knew the value of just a single byte of memory. We fed off the tit of mother COBOL, and her evil cousin, Fortran, and we praised Pascal for it's type safety, and sheer elegance. We dabbled fearlessly in LISP, mastered the DOS commandline, knew the difference between extended and expanded memory, and decided early on that Windows was Hell incarnate. We taught ourselves C and then C++, still thinking tight and efficient code mattered to someone other than ourselves. We struggled to learn MFC's quirks and eventually began to fondly recall the exquisite and deft code used to circumvent the library's limitations, or as we put it, extend it's usefulness. And then came .Net and cookie-cutter applications. Suddenly we were thrust into the maelstrom of "me-too" programming, populated by 12-year olds who believe that the OS should be web-based, and that have no awareness nor respect for those who came before - those who could write 100,000 line programs from scratch with nothing more than a few hastily scratched verses on a post-it note. I'm a relic. I like the old days. I like the old ways. There. I've said it.
"Why don't you tie a kerosene-soaked rag around your ankles so the ants won't climb up and eat your candy ass..." - Dale Earnhardt, 1997
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"...the staggering layers of obscenity in your statement make it a work of art on so many levels." - Jason Jystad, 10/26/2001 -
I remember fondly the heyday of computer programmers. We were a curious mix of wizards and gods, silently tapping away at keyboards, shunning those new-fangled mouse things as long as possible. We were cowboys, outlaws, and warrior poets weaving titanic tales of bytes and opcodes, roaming the electronic frontier during the burgeoning era of personal computers, free to do as we pleased, and answering only to our peers. We could cram amazing amounts of code into just 4K of memory because we knew assembly language and we knew the value of just a single byte of memory. We fed off the tit of mother COBOL, and her evil cousin, Fortran, and we praised Pascal for it's type safety, and sheer elegance. We dabbled fearlessly in LISP, mastered the DOS commandline, knew the difference between extended and expanded memory, and decided early on that Windows was Hell incarnate. We taught ourselves C and then C++, still thinking tight and efficient code mattered to someone other than ourselves. We struggled to learn MFC's quirks and eventually began to fondly recall the exquisite and deft code used to circumvent the library's limitations, or as we put it, extend it's usefulness. And then came .Net and cookie-cutter applications. Suddenly we were thrust into the maelstrom of "me-too" programming, populated by 12-year olds who believe that the OS should be web-based, and that have no awareness nor respect for those who came before - those who could write 100,000 line programs from scratch with nothing more than a few hastily scratched verses on a post-it note. I'm a relic. I like the old days. I like the old ways. There. I've said it.
"Why don't you tie a kerosene-soaked rag around your ankles so the ants won't climb up and eat your candy ass..." - Dale Earnhardt, 1997
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"...the staggering layers of obscenity in your statement make it a work of art on so many levels." - Jason Jystad, 10/26/2001John Simmons / outlaw programmer wrote:
I'm a relic. I like the old days. I like the old ways. There. I've said it.
.NET has given me a lot more power and flexibilty. The kind of stuff I've always dreamed about having. But as far as all this web-based stuff goes, I feel like a relic too. To me, the web apps UI are clumsy and no where near rich enough to do the kind of interfaces I require. (Okay, you can get some good UI's but usually with 300% more work than a standard desktop app) I can see that web-services are a useful, but only when used with desktop client applications. The rest of this Web 2.0 malarky leaves me cold.
Michael CP Blog [^] Development Blog [^]
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I remember fondly the heyday of computer programmers. We were a curious mix of wizards and gods, silently tapping away at keyboards, shunning those new-fangled mouse things as long as possible. We were cowboys, outlaws, and warrior poets weaving titanic tales of bytes and opcodes, roaming the electronic frontier during the burgeoning era of personal computers, free to do as we pleased, and answering only to our peers. We could cram amazing amounts of code into just 4K of memory because we knew assembly language and we knew the value of just a single byte of memory. We fed off the tit of mother COBOL, and her evil cousin, Fortran, and we praised Pascal for it's type safety, and sheer elegance. We dabbled fearlessly in LISP, mastered the DOS commandline, knew the difference between extended and expanded memory, and decided early on that Windows was Hell incarnate. We taught ourselves C and then C++, still thinking tight and efficient code mattered to someone other than ourselves. We struggled to learn MFC's quirks and eventually began to fondly recall the exquisite and deft code used to circumvent the library's limitations, or as we put it, extend it's usefulness. And then came .Net and cookie-cutter applications. Suddenly we were thrust into the maelstrom of "me-too" programming, populated by 12-year olds who believe that the OS should be web-based, and that have no awareness nor respect for those who came before - those who could write 100,000 line programs from scratch with nothing more than a few hastily scratched verses on a post-it note. I'm a relic. I like the old days. I like the old ways. There. I've said it.
"Why don't you tie a kerosene-soaked rag around your ankles so the ants won't climb up and eat your candy ass..." - Dale Earnhardt, 1997
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"...the staggering layers of obscenity in your statement make it a work of art on so many levels." - Jason Jystad, 10/26/2001I'm with you... Steve
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I remember fondly the heyday of computer programmers. We were a curious mix of wizards and gods, silently tapping away at keyboards, shunning those new-fangled mouse things as long as possible. We were cowboys, outlaws, and warrior poets weaving titanic tales of bytes and opcodes, roaming the electronic frontier during the burgeoning era of personal computers, free to do as we pleased, and answering only to our peers. We could cram amazing amounts of code into just 4K of memory because we knew assembly language and we knew the value of just a single byte of memory. We fed off the tit of mother COBOL, and her evil cousin, Fortran, and we praised Pascal for it's type safety, and sheer elegance. We dabbled fearlessly in LISP, mastered the DOS commandline, knew the difference between extended and expanded memory, and decided early on that Windows was Hell incarnate. We taught ourselves C and then C++, still thinking tight and efficient code mattered to someone other than ourselves. We struggled to learn MFC's quirks and eventually began to fondly recall the exquisite and deft code used to circumvent the library's limitations, or as we put it, extend it's usefulness. And then came .Net and cookie-cutter applications. Suddenly we were thrust into the maelstrom of "me-too" programming, populated by 12-year olds who believe that the OS should be web-based, and that have no awareness nor respect for those who came before - those who could write 100,000 line programs from scratch with nothing more than a few hastily scratched verses on a post-it note. I'm a relic. I like the old days. I like the old ways. There. I've said it.
"Why don't you tie a kerosene-soaked rag around your ankles so the ants won't climb up and eat your candy ass..." - Dale Earnhardt, 1997
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"...the staggering layers of obscenity in your statement make it a work of art on so many levels." - Jason Jystad, 10/26/2001Yep, we're the old dogs now. Personally, I think being an old dog rocks. Wouldn't go back to being 20 again for love or money. And yet, there are things that have changed in the "me 2" world of programming that I could certainly live without. Whoever decided that HTML was a valid basis for application programming should be taken outside and summarily executed, in an exceedingly slow and clumsy manner so as to be a fitting punishment. If we have to write software using a clumsy word processor as a platform, then I'm glad we have VS and .NET. At least it almost feels like programming again. However, the :baaaa!: mentality of this business just astounds me. We have a worldwide TCP/IP network. Why in heaven's name aren't we using a more powerful platform for development then a markup language that's less sexy than WordStar? Arf.
Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes www.PracticalStrategyConsulting.com
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I remember fondly the heyday of computer programmers. We were a curious mix of wizards and gods, silently tapping away at keyboards, shunning those new-fangled mouse things as long as possible. We were cowboys, outlaws, and warrior poets weaving titanic tales of bytes and opcodes, roaming the electronic frontier during the burgeoning era of personal computers, free to do as we pleased, and answering only to our peers. We could cram amazing amounts of code into just 4K of memory because we knew assembly language and we knew the value of just a single byte of memory. We fed off the tit of mother COBOL, and her evil cousin, Fortran, and we praised Pascal for it's type safety, and sheer elegance. We dabbled fearlessly in LISP, mastered the DOS commandline, knew the difference between extended and expanded memory, and decided early on that Windows was Hell incarnate. We taught ourselves C and then C++, still thinking tight and efficient code mattered to someone other than ourselves. We struggled to learn MFC's quirks and eventually began to fondly recall the exquisite and deft code used to circumvent the library's limitations, or as we put it, extend it's usefulness. And then came .Net and cookie-cutter applications. Suddenly we were thrust into the maelstrom of "me-too" programming, populated by 12-year olds who believe that the OS should be web-based, and that have no awareness nor respect for those who came before - those who could write 100,000 line programs from scratch with nothing more than a few hastily scratched verses on a post-it note. I'm a relic. I like the old days. I like the old ways. There. I've said it.
"Why don't you tie a kerosene-soaked rag around your ankles so the ants won't climb up and eat your candy ass..." - Dale Earnhardt, 1997
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"...the staggering layers of obscenity in your statement make it a work of art on so many levels." - Jason Jystad, 10/26/2001You almost made me shed a tear...
-- Verletzen zerfetzen zersetzen zerstören Doch es darf nicht mir gehören Ich muss zerstören
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I remember fondly the heyday of computer programmers. We were a curious mix of wizards and gods, silently tapping away at keyboards, shunning those new-fangled mouse things as long as possible. We were cowboys, outlaws, and warrior poets weaving titanic tales of bytes and opcodes, roaming the electronic frontier during the burgeoning era of personal computers, free to do as we pleased, and answering only to our peers. We could cram amazing amounts of code into just 4K of memory because we knew assembly language and we knew the value of just a single byte of memory. We fed off the tit of mother COBOL, and her evil cousin, Fortran, and we praised Pascal for it's type safety, and sheer elegance. We dabbled fearlessly in LISP, mastered the DOS commandline, knew the difference between extended and expanded memory, and decided early on that Windows was Hell incarnate. We taught ourselves C and then C++, still thinking tight and efficient code mattered to someone other than ourselves. We struggled to learn MFC's quirks and eventually began to fondly recall the exquisite and deft code used to circumvent the library's limitations, or as we put it, extend it's usefulness. And then came .Net and cookie-cutter applications. Suddenly we were thrust into the maelstrom of "me-too" programming, populated by 12-year olds who believe that the OS should be web-based, and that have no awareness nor respect for those who came before - those who could write 100,000 line programs from scratch with nothing more than a few hastily scratched verses on a post-it note. I'm a relic. I like the old days. I like the old ways. There. I've said it.
"Why don't you tie a kerosene-soaked rag around your ankles so the ants won't climb up and eat your candy ass..." - Dale Earnhardt, 1997
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"...the staggering layers of obscenity in your statement make it a work of art on so many levels." - Jason Jystad, 10/26/2001 -
Yep, we're the old dogs now. Personally, I think being an old dog rocks. Wouldn't go back to being 20 again for love or money. And yet, there are things that have changed in the "me 2" world of programming that I could certainly live without. Whoever decided that HTML was a valid basis for application programming should be taken outside and summarily executed, in an exceedingly slow and clumsy manner so as to be a fitting punishment. If we have to write software using a clumsy word processor as a platform, then I'm glad we have VS and .NET. At least it almost feels like programming again. However, the :baaaa!: mentality of this business just astounds me. We have a worldwide TCP/IP network. Why in heaven's name aren't we using a more powerful platform for development then a markup language that's less sexy than WordStar? Arf.
Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes www.PracticalStrategyConsulting.com
WordStar, heh, heh, I remember the CPM/MPM days....
............................. There's nothing like the sound of incoming rifle and mortar rounds to cure the blues. No matter how down you are, you take an active and immediate interest in life. Fiat justitia, et ruat cælum
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I remember fondly the heyday of computer programmers. We were a curious mix of wizards and gods, silently tapping away at keyboards, shunning those new-fangled mouse things as long as possible. We were cowboys, outlaws, and warrior poets weaving titanic tales of bytes and opcodes, roaming the electronic frontier during the burgeoning era of personal computers, free to do as we pleased, and answering only to our peers. We could cram amazing amounts of code into just 4K of memory because we knew assembly language and we knew the value of just a single byte of memory. We fed off the tit of mother COBOL, and her evil cousin, Fortran, and we praised Pascal for it's type safety, and sheer elegance. We dabbled fearlessly in LISP, mastered the DOS commandline, knew the difference between extended and expanded memory, and decided early on that Windows was Hell incarnate. We taught ourselves C and then C++, still thinking tight and efficient code mattered to someone other than ourselves. We struggled to learn MFC's quirks and eventually began to fondly recall the exquisite and deft code used to circumvent the library's limitations, or as we put it, extend it's usefulness. And then came .Net and cookie-cutter applications. Suddenly we were thrust into the maelstrom of "me-too" programming, populated by 12-year olds who believe that the OS should be web-based, and that have no awareness nor respect for those who came before - those who could write 100,000 line programs from scratch with nothing more than a few hastily scratched verses on a post-it note. I'm a relic. I like the old days. I like the old ways. There. I've said it.
"Why don't you tie a kerosene-soaked rag around your ankles so the ants won't climb up and eat your candy ass..." - Dale Earnhardt, 1997
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"...the staggering layers of obscenity in your statement make it a work of art on so many levels." - Jason Jystad, 10/26/2001Me too. I agree with most of what you said, except that I never praised Pascal (not the language, anyway). Oh yes ... and I dreamed of having 4k of memory ... Kids nowadays don't know they were born! Phil
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Ravi Bhavnani wrote:
Yep. But I have to admit, I've also had the privilege of working with some pretty sharp 20-somethings.
Make no mistake, that wasn't a shot of disrespect towards 20 somethings, but rather a remembrance of the many stupid things I personally did in those days. :-D
Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes www.PracticalStrategyConsulting.com
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I remember fondly the heyday of computer programmers. We were a curious mix of wizards and gods, silently tapping away at keyboards, shunning those new-fangled mouse things as long as possible. We were cowboys, outlaws, and warrior poets weaving titanic tales of bytes and opcodes, roaming the electronic frontier during the burgeoning era of personal computers, free to do as we pleased, and answering only to our peers. We could cram amazing amounts of code into just 4K of memory because we knew assembly language and we knew the value of just a single byte of memory. We fed off the tit of mother COBOL, and her evil cousin, Fortran, and we praised Pascal for it's type safety, and sheer elegance. We dabbled fearlessly in LISP, mastered the DOS commandline, knew the difference between extended and expanded memory, and decided early on that Windows was Hell incarnate. We taught ourselves C and then C++, still thinking tight and efficient code mattered to someone other than ourselves. We struggled to learn MFC's quirks and eventually began to fondly recall the exquisite and deft code used to circumvent the library's limitations, or as we put it, extend it's usefulness. And then came .Net and cookie-cutter applications. Suddenly we were thrust into the maelstrom of "me-too" programming, populated by 12-year olds who believe that the OS should be web-based, and that have no awareness nor respect for those who came before - those who could write 100,000 line programs from scratch with nothing more than a few hastily scratched verses on a post-it note. I'm a relic. I like the old days. I like the old ways. There. I've said it.
"Why don't you tie a kerosene-soaked rag around your ankles so the ants won't climb up and eat your candy ass..." - Dale Earnhardt, 1997
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"...the staggering layers of obscenity in your statement make it a work of art on so many levels." - Jason Jystad, 10/26/2001John Simmons / outlaw programmer wrote:
I'm a relic. I like the old days. I like the old ways. There. I've said it.
First, we're "classic" not "relics". Second, I love the noise the Teletype made, the one hooked up to the Burroughs 8800 that I first learned basic on and hacked a computer football game so I always won. I loved when I was at work, the Pascal code we had written wouldn't run in the time alloted on the 12Mhz dual processor custom built "screamer" we used, so we converted it all to Assembly. I loved the way we had to use the regesters to squeeze out 6 clock cycles from some assembly code. Those were the good old days that I sometime talk about and hear all the kids at work laugh about. Languages like ALGOL, SNOBOL, LISP, PL1, and especially Assembly language were used. (I don't admit to using COBOL but I did meet Col. Grace Hopper) I'm all nastaulgic (sp?) now.
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Ravi Bhavnani wrote:
Yep. But I have to admit, I've also had the privilege of working with some pretty sharp 20-somethings.
Make no mistake, that wasn't a shot of disrespect towards 20 somethings, but rather a remembrance of the many stupid things I personally did in those days. :-D
Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes www.PracticalStrategyConsulting.com
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I remember fondly the heyday of computer programmers. We were a curious mix of wizards and gods, silently tapping away at keyboards, shunning those new-fangled mouse things as long as possible. We were cowboys, outlaws, and warrior poets weaving titanic tales of bytes and opcodes, roaming the electronic frontier during the burgeoning era of personal computers, free to do as we pleased, and answering only to our peers. We could cram amazing amounts of code into just 4K of memory because we knew assembly language and we knew the value of just a single byte of memory. We fed off the tit of mother COBOL, and her evil cousin, Fortran, and we praised Pascal for it's type safety, and sheer elegance. We dabbled fearlessly in LISP, mastered the DOS commandline, knew the difference between extended and expanded memory, and decided early on that Windows was Hell incarnate. We taught ourselves C and then C++, still thinking tight and efficient code mattered to someone other than ourselves. We struggled to learn MFC's quirks and eventually began to fondly recall the exquisite and deft code used to circumvent the library's limitations, or as we put it, extend it's usefulness. And then came .Net and cookie-cutter applications. Suddenly we were thrust into the maelstrom of "me-too" programming, populated by 12-year olds who believe that the OS should be web-based, and that have no awareness nor respect for those who came before - those who could write 100,000 line programs from scratch with nothing more than a few hastily scratched verses on a post-it note. I'm a relic. I like the old days. I like the old ways. There. I've said it.
"Why don't you tie a kerosene-soaked rag around your ankles so the ants won't climb up and eat your candy ass..." - Dale Earnhardt, 1997
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"...the staggering layers of obscenity in your statement make it a work of art on so many levels." - Jason Jystad, 10/26/2001 -
I remember fondly the heyday of computer programmers. We were a curious mix of wizards and gods, silently tapping away at keyboards, shunning those new-fangled mouse things as long as possible. We were cowboys, outlaws, and warrior poets weaving titanic tales of bytes and opcodes, roaming the electronic frontier during the burgeoning era of personal computers, free to do as we pleased, and answering only to our peers. We could cram amazing amounts of code into just 4K of memory because we knew assembly language and we knew the value of just a single byte of memory. We fed off the tit of mother COBOL, and her evil cousin, Fortran, and we praised Pascal for it's type safety, and sheer elegance. We dabbled fearlessly in LISP, mastered the DOS commandline, knew the difference between extended and expanded memory, and decided early on that Windows was Hell incarnate. We taught ourselves C and then C++, still thinking tight and efficient code mattered to someone other than ourselves. We struggled to learn MFC's quirks and eventually began to fondly recall the exquisite and deft code used to circumvent the library's limitations, or as we put it, extend it's usefulness. And then came .Net and cookie-cutter applications. Suddenly we were thrust into the maelstrom of "me-too" programming, populated by 12-year olds who believe that the OS should be web-based, and that have no awareness nor respect for those who came before - those who could write 100,000 line programs from scratch with nothing more than a few hastily scratched verses on a post-it note. I'm a relic. I like the old days. I like the old ways. There. I've said it.
"Why don't you tie a kerosene-soaked rag around your ankles so the ants won't climb up and eat your candy ass..." - Dale Earnhardt, 1997
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"...the staggering layers of obscenity in your statement make it a work of art on so many levels." - Jason Jystad, 10/26/2001John Simmons / outlaw programmer wrote:
her evil cousin, Fortran
Got that one backwards. Our beloved ForTran if you will. Never liked Pascal, but that is due to the introduction I obtained.
John Simmons / outlaw programmer wrote:
4K of memory
And I could heat my lunch on the 2K memory expansion tower taking the desk space next to mine.
John Simmons / outlaw programmer wrote:
I'm a relic. I like the old days. I like the old ways.
Yes they were fun sometimes, I also remember trying to dry out a roll of paper tape so I could read it back in, too close to retirement (ok a little dreaming going on) to want a reboot.
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I remember fondly the heyday of computer programmers. We were a curious mix of wizards and gods, silently tapping away at keyboards, shunning those new-fangled mouse things as long as possible. We were cowboys, outlaws, and warrior poets weaving titanic tales of bytes and opcodes, roaming the electronic frontier during the burgeoning era of personal computers, free to do as we pleased, and answering only to our peers. We could cram amazing amounts of code into just 4K of memory because we knew assembly language and we knew the value of just a single byte of memory. We fed off the tit of mother COBOL, and her evil cousin, Fortran, and we praised Pascal for it's type safety, and sheer elegance. We dabbled fearlessly in LISP, mastered the DOS commandline, knew the difference between extended and expanded memory, and decided early on that Windows was Hell incarnate. We taught ourselves C and then C++, still thinking tight and efficient code mattered to someone other than ourselves. We struggled to learn MFC's quirks and eventually began to fondly recall the exquisite and deft code used to circumvent the library's limitations, or as we put it, extend it's usefulness. And then came .Net and cookie-cutter applications. Suddenly we were thrust into the maelstrom of "me-too" programming, populated by 12-year olds who believe that the OS should be web-based, and that have no awareness nor respect for those who came before - those who could write 100,000 line programs from scratch with nothing more than a few hastily scratched verses on a post-it note. I'm a relic. I like the old days. I like the old ways. There. I've said it.
"Why don't you tie a kerosene-soaked rag around your ankles so the ants won't climb up and eat your candy ass..." - Dale Earnhardt, 1997
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"...the staggering layers of obscenity in your statement make it a work of art on so many levels." - Jason Jystad, 10/26/2001John Simmons / outlaw programmer wrote:
I'm a relic. I like the old days. I like the old ways. There. I've said it.
Me too. :) Maybe we can sell ourselves to the Smithsonian. Marc
People are just notoriously impossible. --DavidCrow
There's NO excuse for not commenting your code. -- John Simmons / outlaw programmer
People who say that they will refactor their code later to make it "good" don't understand refactoring, nor the art and craft of programming. -- Josh Smith -
Hey! I'm Sid! :)
"Why don't you tie a kerosene-soaked rag around your ankles so the ants won't climb up and eat your candy ass..." - Dale Earnhardt, 1997
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"...the staggering layers of obscenity in your statement make it a work of art on so many levels." - Jason Jystad, 10/26/2001 -
I remember fondly the heyday of computer programmers. We were a curious mix of wizards and gods, silently tapping away at keyboards, shunning those new-fangled mouse things as long as possible. We were cowboys, outlaws, and warrior poets weaving titanic tales of bytes and opcodes, roaming the electronic frontier during the burgeoning era of personal computers, free to do as we pleased, and answering only to our peers. We could cram amazing amounts of code into just 4K of memory because we knew assembly language and we knew the value of just a single byte of memory. We fed off the tit of mother COBOL, and her evil cousin, Fortran, and we praised Pascal for it's type safety, and sheer elegance. We dabbled fearlessly in LISP, mastered the DOS commandline, knew the difference between extended and expanded memory, and decided early on that Windows was Hell incarnate. We taught ourselves C and then C++, still thinking tight and efficient code mattered to someone other than ourselves. We struggled to learn MFC's quirks and eventually began to fondly recall the exquisite and deft code used to circumvent the library's limitations, or as we put it, extend it's usefulness. And then came .Net and cookie-cutter applications. Suddenly we were thrust into the maelstrom of "me-too" programming, populated by 12-year olds who believe that the OS should be web-based, and that have no awareness nor respect for those who came before - those who could write 100,000 line programs from scratch with nothing more than a few hastily scratched verses on a post-it note. I'm a relic. I like the old days. I like the old ways. There. I've said it.
"Why don't you tie a kerosene-soaked rag around your ankles so the ants won't climb up and eat your candy ass..." - Dale Earnhardt, 1997
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"...the staggering layers of obscenity in your statement make it a work of art on so many levels." - Jason Jystad, 10/26/2001Ahhh memories - my brain was playing the "Way We Were" song while I was reading that. I miss the good ol' days, where I had every keyboard command of microsoft's M.exe editor memorized. I don't even take the time to learn keyboard short cuts, these days.
- S 50 cups of coffee and you know it's on!
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I remember fondly the heyday of computer programmers. We were a curious mix of wizards and gods, silently tapping away at keyboards, shunning those new-fangled mouse things as long as possible. We were cowboys, outlaws, and warrior poets weaving titanic tales of bytes and opcodes, roaming the electronic frontier during the burgeoning era of personal computers, free to do as we pleased, and answering only to our peers. We could cram amazing amounts of code into just 4K of memory because we knew assembly language and we knew the value of just a single byte of memory. We fed off the tit of mother COBOL, and her evil cousin, Fortran, and we praised Pascal for it's type safety, and sheer elegance. We dabbled fearlessly in LISP, mastered the DOS commandline, knew the difference between extended and expanded memory, and decided early on that Windows was Hell incarnate. We taught ourselves C and then C++, still thinking tight and efficient code mattered to someone other than ourselves. We struggled to learn MFC's quirks and eventually began to fondly recall the exquisite and deft code used to circumvent the library's limitations, or as we put it, extend it's usefulness. And then came .Net and cookie-cutter applications. Suddenly we were thrust into the maelstrom of "me-too" programming, populated by 12-year olds who believe that the OS should be web-based, and that have no awareness nor respect for those who came before - those who could write 100,000 line programs from scratch with nothing more than a few hastily scratched verses on a post-it note. I'm a relic. I like the old days. I like the old ways. There. I've said it.
"Why don't you tie a kerosene-soaked rag around your ankles so the ants won't climb up and eat your candy ass..." - Dale Earnhardt, 1997
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"...the staggering layers of obscenity in your statement make it a work of art on so many levels." - Jason Jystad, 10/26/2001i found an old receipt for a laptop and memory expansion i bought in chicago in 1994 the laptop had a p75 ... 8mb ram ... 1mb vram ... 100mb hdd ... 640x480 screen ... cdrom and cost $5100 i added a pcmcia 28.8 modem for $295 and (wait for it) 16mb of memory for... $1095 and i sit and type this on a centrino duo with 2gb ram 80gb hdd 1680x1050 screen with dvdrw and wireless g that cost sub $2000 back then i was excited by this stuff and learning mfc and win95 programming *sigh*
"there is no spoon"
{some projects} {about me} -
I remember fondly the heyday of computer programmers. We were a curious mix of wizards and gods, silently tapping away at keyboards, shunning those new-fangled mouse things as long as possible. We were cowboys, outlaws, and warrior poets weaving titanic tales of bytes and opcodes, roaming the electronic frontier during the burgeoning era of personal computers, free to do as we pleased, and answering only to our peers. We could cram amazing amounts of code into just 4K of memory because we knew assembly language and we knew the value of just a single byte of memory. We fed off the tit of mother COBOL, and her evil cousin, Fortran, and we praised Pascal for it's type safety, and sheer elegance. We dabbled fearlessly in LISP, mastered the DOS commandline, knew the difference between extended and expanded memory, and decided early on that Windows was Hell incarnate. We taught ourselves C and then C++, still thinking tight and efficient code mattered to someone other than ourselves. We struggled to learn MFC's quirks and eventually began to fondly recall the exquisite and deft code used to circumvent the library's limitations, or as we put it, extend it's usefulness. And then came .Net and cookie-cutter applications. Suddenly we were thrust into the maelstrom of "me-too" programming, populated by 12-year olds who believe that the OS should be web-based, and that have no awareness nor respect for those who came before - those who could write 100,000 line programs from scratch with nothing more than a few hastily scratched verses on a post-it note. I'm a relic. I like the old days. I like the old ways. There. I've said it.
"Why don't you tie a kerosene-soaked rag around your ankles so the ants won't climb up and eat your candy ass..." - Dale Earnhardt, 1997
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"...the staggering layers of obscenity in your statement make it a work of art on so many levels." - Jason Jystad, 10/26/2001Look... John don't sweat this stuff okay. Wait about 10 more years for all the baby boomers to totally retire (baby boomers = people who had a clue) and then your hayday will come back in full color and you'll be earning $150 an hour because there simply won't be anyone around who knows this stuff and you can name your price. Don't laugh it's going to happen. There is going to be such a huge hole left by retiring boomers that it's going to be a gold mine for forward thinkers who prepare for it about 2 years before it becomes pandemic.
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I remember fondly the heyday of computer programmers. We were a curious mix of wizards and gods, silently tapping away at keyboards, shunning those new-fangled mouse things as long as possible. We were cowboys, outlaws, and warrior poets weaving titanic tales of bytes and opcodes, roaming the electronic frontier during the burgeoning era of personal computers, free to do as we pleased, and answering only to our peers. We could cram amazing amounts of code into just 4K of memory because we knew assembly language and we knew the value of just a single byte of memory. We fed off the tit of mother COBOL, and her evil cousin, Fortran, and we praised Pascal for it's type safety, and sheer elegance. We dabbled fearlessly in LISP, mastered the DOS commandline, knew the difference between extended and expanded memory, and decided early on that Windows was Hell incarnate. We taught ourselves C and then C++, still thinking tight and efficient code mattered to someone other than ourselves. We struggled to learn MFC's quirks and eventually began to fondly recall the exquisite and deft code used to circumvent the library's limitations, or as we put it, extend it's usefulness. And then came .Net and cookie-cutter applications. Suddenly we were thrust into the maelstrom of "me-too" programming, populated by 12-year olds who believe that the OS should be web-based, and that have no awareness nor respect for those who came before - those who could write 100,000 line programs from scratch with nothing more than a few hastily scratched verses on a post-it note. I'm a relic. I like the old days. I like the old ways. There. I've said it.
"Why don't you tie a kerosene-soaked rag around your ankles so the ants won't climb up and eat your candy ass..." - Dale Earnhardt, 1997
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"...the staggering layers of obscenity in your statement make it a work of art on so many levels." - Jason Jystad, 10/26/2001John Simmons / outlaw programmer wrote:
We were a curious mix of wizards and gods
Hey John, we still are! However, someone just put all the ancient spells in a book and sells it along with a magic wand and usually a lot of so called programmers are simply very handy with the magic wand. Finding a compiler bug that trashes the call stack if multiple calls were made with pointers as argument, requires the old "wizards and gods" I think (actually that was an early release of a C-compiler for PIC17C675). I haven't seen a spell for that one in the book of spells. What bothers me is that there seems to be no "need" for the old school because now we simply wave the magic wand and all should work like a charm, usually... I don't like the idea that a handful of guys in Redmond are the only ones that really knows what's going on underneath all framework stuff, point net, C-sharp, C-dull and F-razor. Call me an evolution reluctant dinosaur! -- Rog
"It's supposed to be hard, otherwise anybody could do it!" - selfquote
"No one remembers a coward!" - Jan Elfström 1998
"...but everyone remembers an idiot!" - my lawyer 2005 when heard of Jan's saying above
