Who is able to tuck a pattern matching program into a few hundred bytes nowadays?
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Years ago I came across this pamphlet: http://www.pbm.com/~lindahl/real.programmers.html[^] It reads: "Some of the most awesome Real Programmers of all work at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California. Many of them know the entire operating system of the Pioneer and Voyager spacecraft by heart. With a combination of large ground-based Fortran programs and small spacecraft-based assembly language programs, they are able to do incredible feats of navigation and improvisation-- hitting ten-kilometer wide windows at Saturn after six years in space, repairing or bypassing damaged sensor platforms, radios, and batteries. Allegedly, one Real Programmer managed to tuck a pattern matching program into a few hundred bytes of unused memory in a Voyager spacecraft that searched for, located, and photographed a new moon of Jupiter." I wonder what caused the decline of such people. I wish I knew such a guy to ask him this and that.
Get down get down get down get it on show love and give it up What are you waiting on?
They haven't declined, they just swapped workplaces to making some realtime stock investment programs for some hedgefunds. What? Me cynical?
Wrong is evil and must be defeated. - Jeff Ello[^]
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They haven't declined, they just swapped workplaces to making some realtime stock investment programs for some hedgefunds. What? Me cynical?
Wrong is evil and must be defeated. - Jeff Ello[^]
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Years ago I came across this pamphlet: http://www.pbm.com/~lindahl/real.programmers.html[^] It reads: "Some of the most awesome Real Programmers of all work at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California. Many of them know the entire operating system of the Pioneer and Voyager spacecraft by heart. With a combination of large ground-based Fortran programs and small spacecraft-based assembly language programs, they are able to do incredible feats of navigation and improvisation-- hitting ten-kilometer wide windows at Saturn after six years in space, repairing or bypassing damaged sensor platforms, radios, and batteries. Allegedly, one Real Programmer managed to tuck a pattern matching program into a few hundred bytes of unused memory in a Voyager spacecraft that searched for, located, and photographed a new moon of Jupiter." I wonder what caused the decline of such people. I wish I knew such a guy to ask him this and that.
Get down get down get down get it on show love and give it up What are you waiting on?
Very apropos for its vintage. :thumbsup:
Sanmayce wrote:
I wonder what caused the decline of such people.
Improvements in storage and processing power. /ravi
My new year resolution: 2048 x 1536 Home | Articles | My .NET bits | Freeware ravib(at)ravib(dot)com
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Years ago I came across this pamphlet: http://www.pbm.com/~lindahl/real.programmers.html[^] It reads: "Some of the most awesome Real Programmers of all work at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California. Many of them know the entire operating system of the Pioneer and Voyager spacecraft by heart. With a combination of large ground-based Fortran programs and small spacecraft-based assembly language programs, they are able to do incredible feats of navigation and improvisation-- hitting ten-kilometer wide windows at Saturn after six years in space, repairing or bypassing damaged sensor platforms, radios, and batteries. Allegedly, one Real Programmer managed to tuck a pattern matching program into a few hundred bytes of unused memory in a Voyager spacecraft that searched for, located, and photographed a new moon of Jupiter." I wonder what caused the decline of such people. I wish I knew such a guy to ask him this and that.
Get down get down get down get it on show love and give it up What are you waiting on?
There still quite few assembly programmers, at least where I am. In the last year I was programming an HC08GR16, that has 16K of memory that include the program, working memory and interrupt vector tables. There's fun stuff like performing stack analysis, timing analysis and figuring out ways to streamline code so you can fit more in in addition to programming the microcontroller peripherals to communicate with other microcontrollers in the system. Granted one can use ANSII C to program, but I found myself still going through the assembly code to make sure the compiler does what I intended. I wouldn't consider myself a master at assembly but I do like the direct manipulation of the hardware. No drivers to deal with, every speck of code for every bit of memory is right there. Some of the people I know amaze me at what they can do in just 16K of space.
It was broke, so I fixed it.
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Years ago I came across this pamphlet: http://www.pbm.com/~lindahl/real.programmers.html[^] It reads: "Some of the most awesome Real Programmers of all work at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California. Many of them know the entire operating system of the Pioneer and Voyager spacecraft by heart. With a combination of large ground-based Fortran programs and small spacecraft-based assembly language programs, they are able to do incredible feats of navigation and improvisation-- hitting ten-kilometer wide windows at Saturn after six years in space, repairing or bypassing damaged sensor platforms, radios, and batteries. Allegedly, one Real Programmer managed to tuck a pattern matching program into a few hundred bytes of unused memory in a Voyager spacecraft that searched for, located, and photographed a new moon of Jupiter." I wonder what caused the decline of such people. I wish I knew such a guy to ask him this and that.
Get down get down get down get it on show love and give it up What are you waiting on?
Go work for a place such as JPL, NASA, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and other government military contractors. There are also the medical device companies to consider. When one mistake costs hundreds of millions of dollars or a human life, the programming is still like that.
To know and not do, is not yet to know http://www.codeofthedamned.com
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Years ago I came across this pamphlet: http://www.pbm.com/~lindahl/real.programmers.html[^] It reads: "Some of the most awesome Real Programmers of all work at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California. Many of them know the entire operating system of the Pioneer and Voyager spacecraft by heart. With a combination of large ground-based Fortran programs and small spacecraft-based assembly language programs, they are able to do incredible feats of navigation and improvisation-- hitting ten-kilometer wide windows at Saturn after six years in space, repairing or bypassing damaged sensor platforms, radios, and batteries. Allegedly, one Real Programmer managed to tuck a pattern matching program into a few hundred bytes of unused memory in a Voyager spacecraft that searched for, located, and photographed a new moon of Jupiter." I wonder what caused the decline of such people. I wish I knew such a guy to ask him this and that.
Get down get down get down get it on show love and give it up What are you waiting on?
Any Java programmer could do it. He'd have to include 6Gb of frameworks, though.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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Oh, no no, really, I am not delusional I really want to communicate with such people, as for asking myself I do all the time, that's what happens when one have no one to talk to - talking to oneself - not a bad thing by the way.
Get down get down get down get it on show love and give it up What are you waiting on?
When you talk to yourself, do you get a reply? Is it a "voice in your head"?
If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.-John Q. Adams
You must accept one of two basic premises: Either we are alone in the universe, or we are not alone in the universe. And either way, the implications are staggering.-Wernher von Braun
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.-Albert Einstein -
Any Java programmer could do it. He'd have to include 6Gb of frameworks, though.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
Quote:
Java
X|
If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.-John Q. Adams
You must accept one of two basic premises: Either we are alone in the universe, or we are not alone in the universe. And either way, the implications are staggering.-Wernher von Braun
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.-Albert Einstein -
Years ago I came across this pamphlet: http://www.pbm.com/~lindahl/real.programmers.html[^] It reads: "Some of the most awesome Real Programmers of all work at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California. Many of them know the entire operating system of the Pioneer and Voyager spacecraft by heart. With a combination of large ground-based Fortran programs and small spacecraft-based assembly language programs, they are able to do incredible feats of navigation and improvisation-- hitting ten-kilometer wide windows at Saturn after six years in space, repairing or bypassing damaged sensor platforms, radios, and batteries. Allegedly, one Real Programmer managed to tuck a pattern matching program into a few hundred bytes of unused memory in a Voyager spacecraft that searched for, located, and photographed a new moon of Jupiter." I wonder what caused the decline of such people. I wish I knew such a guy to ask him this and that.
Get down get down get down get it on show love and give it up What are you waiting on?
Sanmayce wrote:
I wonder what caused the decline of such people.
Same reason that we no longer have demi-gods, because myth is not reality. The reason someone might (which is what the quote says) have put a piece of software in a very small space is because they needed that functionality, that was all the space they had and they managed to create a solution. Which is no different than anyone else solving some need. Now it could be that in fact that very specific piece of functionality was very, very clever. But there were many people doing clever things when space was very limited. Doesn't mean people do not do clever things now. And where it is really clever and satisfies all of the needs of the business and isn't just a demonstration of how "clever" the programmer is.
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Sanmayce wrote:
I wonder what caused the decline of such people.
Same reason that we no longer have demi-gods, because myth is not reality. The reason someone might (which is what the quote says) have put a piece of software in a very small space is because they needed that functionality, that was all the space they had and they managed to create a solution. Which is no different than anyone else solving some need. Now it could be that in fact that very specific piece of functionality was very, very clever. But there were many people doing clever things when space was very limited. Doesn't mean people do not do clever things now. And where it is really clever and satisfies all of the needs of the business and isn't just a demonstration of how "clever" the programmer is.
I guess I am either naive or believer in supernatural. People are different, as I see you are pragmatic while I more of a dreamer, one of the things that I really don't understand is how the payment dictates the creativity of artists/coders to such extent that it became the primary not only concern but the motivation itself, this is sickness in my eyes, I believe in power of human inner sensitivity (not intelligence) in other words: soul - something uncontrollable by money. Not long ago I posted some excerpts on what inspiration really is at: http://forum.thefreedictionary.com/postst31183p3_MASAKARI--The-people-s-choice--General-Purpose-Grade--English-wordlist.aspx[^] Doing things in poetical soulful manner is what fascinates me, being in such mode of pure revelation (some call it meditation) is what interests me not mere coding skills - every smartass can do incredible feats.
Get down get down get down get it on show love and give it up What are you waiting on?