[geeks] Software Bloat

[Ken Hansen]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Joshua D Boyd" <jdboyd at cs.millersville.edu>
To: <geeks at sunhelp.org>
Sent: Monday, December 17, 2001 10:27 PM
Subject: Re: [geeks] Software Bloat


> On Mon, Dec 17, 2001 at 02:16:10PM -0800, Ken Hansen wrote:
> > Wow, is it just me or does anyone else feel old too?
> >
> > "... when BASIC had line numbers" indeed!
>
> Well, of course, saying when BASIC had line numbers isn't the best way to
put
> it since my understanding is that BASIC originally didn't have line
numbers.

I don't know about that - I suspect it did but I honestly don't know...
Anyone?

> I did do quite a bit of line number hacking in the late 80s (I was so
proud of

I think you are confusing line graphics with line numbers here...

> drawing houses and triangles and stuff on the screen on my Toshiba T100).
And
> then I continued using line numbers in basic until 1992ish when someone
showed
> me how to use labels in quickbasic on the mac.  Woo wee.  That sure made
life a
> lot more fun.  Quickbasic on the mac was so cool.  I used it at a local
> university (not the one I'm now at though).
>
> > Joshua, you crack me up... Maybe some day I'll explain
> > to you why real programers only code up to column 71,
> > and what it means to have a character in the 72nd
> > column... ;^)
>
> Hmm.

It marked that the current line was continued on the next card, akin to the
backslash <return> in more current environments. By locking that column to
one single function, a continuation takes one less character than more
"modern" operating systems...

> > Of course, you'll have to come visit me at the "old
> > Coders Home", where we sit around and reminisce about
> > punching humorous patterns with the papertape punch...
>
> And where were you doing that?  Wasn't paper tape mostly gone by the time
you

I was playing with paper tape in the 7th grade - on an ASR-33 (or was it
KSR-33?) terminal dialed in to the Lawrence Livermore Labs-Berkley just over
the hill (I was at school in Oakland) at 110 baud (dial - I mean stick your
finger in the round thing a dial - the phone number for the computer, wait
for the tones, then jam the handset into the two cups of the acoustic
couplers burning up the wires at 110 baud!

It was in 1975 aprox.

> were a teen?  I know that where my dad worked (which wasn't cutting edge
by any
> means, being a mennonite church owned company in the thick of Lancaster
PA ) in
> the mid to late 80s paper tape wasn't around.  Before that they rented
time on
> another church owned companies computer, and I'm pretty sure that that
also
> didn't use paper tape, though I could be wrong.

Ken


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