you know you're getting old when...

[Dalek Dave]

When you see old films (!) about computers and recognise the 8" Drives! When you remember thinking "Hmm, A Mouse? How is that going to be useful?" When 'Proper' Computers Beeped and showed a blank screen except for "C:\>" When RAM was measured in K, even on Mainframes! When people around you were programming in ALGOL, COBOL and PASCAL. When you wandered around school fiddling with a 5 1/4" floppy and you thought this gave you kudos!

------------------------------------ In science, 'fact' can only mean 'confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent.' I suppose that apples might start to rise tomorrow, but the possibility does not merit equal time in physics classrooms. Stephen J Gould

[Brady Kelly]

Or man pages, to only be climbed with a serious safety kit and good belaying by Chuck Norris.

[josda1000]

agreed. i've never known microsoft to be helpful at all in the first place... except excel i guess. word sucks, windows usually sucks, outlook is terrible... ok i'm done whining.

[peterchen]

Heh :) - but nay, those days actually did exist.

Personally, I love the idea that Raymond spends his nights posting bad regexs to mailing lists under the pseudonym of Jane Smith. He'd be like a super hero, only more nerdy and less useful. [Trevel]
| FoldWithUs! | sighist | µLaunch - program launcher for server core and hyper-v server

[Douglas Troy]

Christian Graus wrote:

Wow - that's older than me then.

So older than dirt then, right? ;P

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:..::. Douglas H. Troy ::..
Bad Astronomy |VCF|wxWidgets|WTL

[Brady Kelly]

oops, I'll leave now before anyone notices me... :suss:

[Dan Neely]

Dunno. I never have recalled it being particularly useful. If 28 counts as young probably depends on if you're looking from 18 or 38. ;p

3x12=36 2x12=24 1x12=12 0x12=18

[Dan Neely]

Assuming it hasn't died in my junkbox I've still got my 486's HD. It had TSRs for a 255 character keyboard buffer and an in app keystroke handler replacement that would accept multiple simultaneous keystrokes in a DOS app. I wonder if it still works in current versions of windows; for NT4 (3.51????) compatibility I had to remove the caps lock/etc light toggling feature.

3x12=36 2x12=24 1x12=12 0x12=18

[Brady Kelly]

From 38 it looks less young that it looks old from 18. Years mean more as you mature, more and more meaningful stuff happens to older and older people. (Besides getting laid for the first time etc. )

[Brady Kelly]

It might not for >= Win 7 (including cousin Vista). I say this without experience, but 7 was where MS first started making major breaks from NT.

[rollei35guy]

Proper computers: - had flashing lights, preferably in HEX - Memory was itty bitty magnetic donuts - Input was punch cards - Interactive access was by Teletype ASR33 (if you were fortunate) - Storage was on a drum - Really fast storage was 'head-per-track' And you are really really old if you: - Know what a card sorter is AND knew how to program the punch panel I suddenly feel very tired ...

[Member 96]

You know you're getting old when you remember fondly how nice the Borland C++ docs were.

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"Creating your own blog is about as easy as creating your own urine, and you're about as likely to find someone else interested in it." -- Lore Sjöberg

[Brady Kelly]

A floppy? Stevie Wonder records were the only floppy disks in my school. You were young. I remember when walking around with a packet of Goloise plain got you some kudos.

[Brady Kelly]

rollei35guy wrote:

- Interactive access was by Teletype ASR33 (if you were fortunate)

I used to man an HF based, 50 baud link between Antarctica and Pretoria (via SA Air Force, my bit). My 'chat' was over T100 telext machines with Elmux error correction. As I reminisced here last night, sometimes we got as slow as tens of seconds between two characters. Sometimes we resorted to Q-code, blindly sending QSY, QSY. HF is interesting; operating frequencies drop from upper 20's MHz, to lower 5's (scuse the pun, radio people :)) at night.

[Roger Wright]

Wow! You're way older than I thought! ;P

"A Journey of a Thousand Rest Stops Begins with a Single Movement"

[Roger Wright]

rollei35guy wrote:

Proper computers

Boot from punched tape. On the other hand, Real computers are programmed with patch cables, using operational amplifiers, resistors, capacitors, and diodes to perform real-time analog computations without the loss of precision inherent in digital systems. ;P

"A Journey of a Thousand Rest Stops Begins with a Single Movement"

[Gary Wheeler]

Older than methane.

Software Zen: delete this;

[rollei35guy]

Diagnostics booted from punch tape programmers keyed in their programs using the front panel switches used slide rules instead of calculators

[Single Step Debugger]

The online help or “Books Online” is just okay, sometimes even good and with relevant examples/sometimes/, but the local search is a joke, it was bad since VS 2005 and now in VS 2008 it doesn’t exists anymore, it’s returning unrelated garbage and it’s slower. For example if I type “anonymous functions” with the C# filter the first result I get is “How to: Configure Initiating Services for Anonymous Dialog Security (Transact-SQL)” with no relevant results in the first page. I’m agree with the one who said previously that the T-SQL help is good every now and then.

The narrow specialist in the broad sense of the word is a complete idiot in the narrow sense of the word. Advertise here – minimum three posts per day are guaranteed.

[Single Step Debugger]

Don’t be so shy, ask her to marry you.

The narrow specialist in the broad sense of the word is a complete idiot in the narrow sense of the word. Advertise here – minimum three posts per day are guaranteed.