I'm a Relic
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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
Christopher Duncan wrote:
less sexy than WordStar
Hey now. I wrote a ton of documentation for the USAF using WordStar. :-D
Software Zen:
delete this; -
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
Christopher Duncan wrote:
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
Can we really do this? I will contribute to start a search for the first one who took that unspeakable action!!! I do think that we need to work more on that punishment though.
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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:
extended and expanded memory
oh the memories! :rolleyes:
We are a big screwed up dysfunctional psychotic happy family - some more screwed up, others more happy, but everybody's psychotic joint venture definition of CP
Linkify! || Fold With Us! || sighist -
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 -
John 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 [^]
Michael P Butler wrote:
but only when used with desktop client applications
What about one website requesting data from another using web-services? That is very useful.
regards, Paul Watson Ireland FeedHenry needs you
eh, stop bugging me about it, give it a couple of days, see what happens.
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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, 10/26/2001Young man, I'll have you know that I was writing multi-user applications on a 64K machine running off twin 8-inch floppies... when MS-Dos was just a gleam in a pimply adolescent's eye... (cue Marty Feldman ... working 29 hours a day for a ha'penny a lifetime... we used to live in shoebox in t'middle o't'road...)
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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
Christopher Duncan wrote:
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?
It isn't great and has plenty of problems but it works now unlike the other options which don't have enough penetration to be used. MS are trying to sort things out with XAML but I don't see that taking off as it is a one vendor solution and we have had one vendor solutions with huge penetration (Flash) and people still don't want to use it. HTML sort of works. It is here now. We should work towards improving it, not throwing it out and trying to replace it. I am actually really happy someone did start the ball rolling with HTML as an application programming. Look at all the innovation that has spawned from it.
regards, Paul Watson Ireland FeedHenry needs you
eh, stop bugging me about it, give it a couple of days, see what happens.
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Christopher Duncan wrote:
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?
It isn't great and has plenty of problems but it works now unlike the other options which don't have enough penetration to be used. MS are trying to sort things out with XAML but I don't see that taking off as it is a one vendor solution and we have had one vendor solutions with huge penetration (Flash) and people still don't want to use it. HTML sort of works. It is here now. We should work towards improving it, not throwing it out and trying to replace it. I am actually really happy someone did start the ball rolling with HTML as an application programming. Look at all the innovation that has spawned from it.
regards, Paul Watson Ireland FeedHenry needs you
eh, stop bugging me about it, give it a couple of days, see what happens.
Paul Watson wrote:
HTML sort of works. It is here now.
The same was true of DOS. HTML is a markup language to display and link static documents, and for that it does fine. It wasn't designed as a foundation to make the web browser a virtual operating system for application programming. Nonetheless, that's what it is these days. It's evolved, true. From a massively clumsy environment to just "mostly clumsy" (similar to Hitchhikers guide's classification of Earth :)). Client application programming (or system programming) in Windows offers an incredibly rich feature set and the tools for a much more elegant UI. Instead of leveraging this power and bolting on a global TCP/IP network, we're trying to make chicken salad out of, er, chicken droppings. True, the web is cross platform, and I think that's it's biggest benefit. However, what if we took the same approach to global standards, augmenting the web browser with another cross platform environment that actually was designed for programming and a UI and desktop experience? I'm telling you, there's a Killer App in here somewhere...
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, 10/26/2001Yes! Just look for the 5 kilobytes Wolfenstein clone made in javascript and you will see relics still live in remote regions of the wild Earth.
---------- Siderite
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Christopher Duncan wrote:
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
Can we really do this? I will contribute to start a search for the first one who took that unspeakable action!!! I do think that we need to work more on that punishment though.
Umm how about a clumsy environment with single dialog box for every field & devoid of any shortcuts, used for data entry. And abasing him by sentencing "Data Entry till death". A clue of such environment - Something like : 1. Enter the first name : ________ Then a question thereof. "Are you sure this is the first name?" If yes then 2. Enter the middle name : _______ Then again the similar question. "Are you sure this is the second name?" If yes then 3. Enter the last name : ________ And yes a question again.:-D This is a mere description of the Name Entry session. Next would be for Father's Name. Similarily for Address, Telephone Number, SSN and so on. The guilty would serve the world and pay for his deceit simultaneously :) How painful is that?
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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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Paul Watson wrote:
HTML sort of works. It is here now.
The same was true of DOS. HTML is a markup language to display and link static documents, and for that it does fine. It wasn't designed as a foundation to make the web browser a virtual operating system for application programming. Nonetheless, that's what it is these days. It's evolved, true. From a massively clumsy environment to just "mostly clumsy" (similar to Hitchhikers guide's classification of Earth :)). Client application programming (or system programming) in Windows offers an incredibly rich feature set and the tools for a much more elegant UI. Instead of leveraging this power and bolting on a global TCP/IP network, we're trying to make chicken salad out of, er, chicken droppings. True, the web is cross platform, and I think that's it's biggest benefit. However, what if we took the same approach to global standards, augmenting the web browser with another cross platform environment that actually was designed for programming and a UI and desktop experience? I'm telling you, there's a Killer App in here somewhere...
Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes www.PracticalStrategyConsulting.com
It isn't just cross platform, it is instantly deployable. No installation, no downloading files and running, no one click installers even. You just point your browser at an address and whatever that address wants to show you, it can. When it updates it updates. And if you have a browser most of the stuff out there just works. No extra downloads, no .NET Frameworks or operating system requirements. Sure, some sites need Flash (98% penetration) or Java (penetrated) and you get quirks between browsers but hardly ever show stopping. No firewall problems either, most firewalls are happy with :80. All of this can be improved by other systems and new software or browser plugins but those all start at a huge disadvantage; 0 penetration. Not just 0 penetration on target systems but 0 penetration in developers minds, in documentation, examples, hacks, workarounds, tutorials, lectures, conferences, tools, vendors, platforms etc. etc. etc. And whatever this Killer App is it has to be an open standard, it has to be easy to hack (HTML over HTTP is brilliantly easy to hack, it is just text. To me binary standards are dead in the water for hacking) and it needs to be uncomplicated. The attempted solutions have all been too complicated, overengineered. They solve everything including the edge cases but they make it difficult for the 99% of problems that aren't edge cases. We don't always need to be able to build a kitchen sink :)
regards, Paul Watson Ireland FeedHenry needs you
eh, stop bugging me about it, give it a couple of days, see what happens.
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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 remember fondly the "good old days" like you. I was a 6502 microprocessor assembly language programmer - had to "hand assemble" many of the programs I wrote. Even today I still remember most of the opcodes: A5 = LDA immediate, 85 = STA immediate, EA=NOP, etc. I remember those days fondly and just the other day I found a copy of VisiCalc that would run on todays PC and toyed with it. Would I want to give up my Visual Studio.NET RAD and go back to hand assembly? Give up my Excel 2003 for VisiCalc? To return to the "good old days"? Hmmm .... for the fun and atmosphere back in those glory days, heck yes. It was a great time with many world changing events going on. CW
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It isn't just cross platform, it is instantly deployable. No installation, no downloading files and running, no one click installers even. You just point your browser at an address and whatever that address wants to show you, it can. When it updates it updates. And if you have a browser most of the stuff out there just works. No extra downloads, no .NET Frameworks or operating system requirements. Sure, some sites need Flash (98% penetration) or Java (penetrated) and you get quirks between browsers but hardly ever show stopping. No firewall problems either, most firewalls are happy with :80. All of this can be improved by other systems and new software or browser plugins but those all start at a huge disadvantage; 0 penetration. Not just 0 penetration on target systems but 0 penetration in developers minds, in documentation, examples, hacks, workarounds, tutorials, lectures, conferences, tools, vendors, platforms etc. etc. etc. And whatever this Killer App is it has to be an open standard, it has to be easy to hack (HTML over HTTP is brilliantly easy to hack, it is just text. To me binary standards are dead in the water for hacking) and it needs to be uncomplicated. The attempted solutions have all been too complicated, overengineered. They solve everything including the edge cases but they make it difficult for the 99% of problems that aren't edge cases. We don't always need to be able to build a kitchen sink :)
regards, Paul Watson Ireland FeedHenry needs you
eh, stop bugging me about it, give it a couple of days, see what happens.
Granted, all good and worthy attributes. But good attributes for a DOS app still leaves you with a DOS app (or its latter day equivalent). Given the fact that I've always admired your idealism, I wouldn't have figured you for the going along with the herd type when a standard is clearly sub par. Say, you didn't sneak off and join the real world when we weren't looking, did you? :-D
Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes www.PracticalStrategyConsulting.com
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Granted, all good and worthy attributes. But good attributes for a DOS app still leaves you with a DOS app (or its latter day equivalent). Given the fact that I've always admired your idealism, I wouldn't have figured you for the going along with the herd type when a standard is clearly sub par. Say, you didn't sneak off and join the real world when we weren't looking, did you? :-D
Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes www.PracticalStrategyConsulting.com
hehe. I love HTML, CSS and JavaScript. It works amazingly well. The whole concept of linked documents with interactive elements and all served by servers that can do amazing processing. Brilliant. All the replacements I have seen are simply "Lets do Windows in a browser" and that sucks. They all loose URLs, they loose text's hackability, they loose openess and a boat load of things that HTML over HTTP brings. This is why I am more keen on supporting WHATWG, XHTML Forms 2.0 and open standards that are building on HTML over HTTP rather than replacing it.
regards, Paul Watson Ireland FeedHenry needs you
eh, stop bugging me about it, give it a couple of days, see what happens.
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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, 10/26/2001Well, coldfusion is in some ways like interpreted basic (which I used even before Fortran) so in a sense we've come full circle. I do hate those 12 year olds who can hand your posterior to you however. ;)
codewizard
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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, 10/26/2001Relic? Hell, you're a youngster compared to me. I just celebrated my 45th anniversary as a programmer. I started in the days of coding pads (paper), keypunch cards, and three day turn around on assemblies (compiles to you youngsters) on machines with 16k characters (IBM 1401) or 160k characters (IBM 7080). COBOL was in the birthing stage and Fortran was only used for scientific applications where I was working so we still used machine language. John Backus and Peter Nauer (of BNF fame) were still wrestling with the notion of meta-languages and the great hope for the future was ALGOL then PL/1. Computers were massive beasts weighing several tons and required huge air conditioning systems to dissapate the heat. The primary storage medium was magnetic tape on 2400' reels. We had 24 drives on the IBM 7080. The first disk drive I used was an IBM 1405 RAMAC (second generation disk) with 10 million characters. It was 5' x 4' x 4', had two read/write heads (that's right 2 that moved up/down, in/out). Max seek time was over 2 seconds. Of course, the 1401 cycle times were measured in milliseconds! Everything was run in batch mode over night so we coded by day and were on-call every night to solve problems that might occur. I'm still an active programmer and I much prefer the development environment I have now. I have no desire to return to "the good old days".
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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, 10/26/2001The difference between your programming peek and mine is that a few scribbles on a post-it note would be just a few lines of code from scratch and not your unmanageable 100,000 lines. Embrace the future and the product of your hard work. You should be happy to see younger programmers emerging and their idea will mature with them.