I remember my first real commercial job, we were working on two "mini" computers. An IBM System 36 and System 38. A requirement of all new programmer hires was to spend the first week working in the computer room assisting the computer operator(s) run the systems. This was so you were much more tolerant of delays etc as you saw that, quite often, the system would prompt for a specific tape to be loaded... manually. And remember, tape was in 12-18" reels, not small cartridges as they are today.
Andy On Wed, Nov 19, 2008 at 10:41 PM, Jack Coats <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Tapes for working data etc were the technology of the day. Archival, > working and temp storage, > even bringing in bits of programs (overlays) from tape was not that > unusual. As hardware has > gotten cheaper, we throw that at a problem rather than brain cells, and > tell ourselves we are thinking > at a 'higher level' just because we obfuscate the solution from the > hardware and ourselves. For > some problems it works. For others it doesn't and just gets in the way > of thinking to a > workable solution. ... ahh, but that is pontificating for another day. ... > > Jason Orendorff wrote: > > On Fri, Nov 14, 2008 at 6:38 PM, Jack Coats <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > >>>> You should have seen it run a big balanced sort using the > >>>> tape rives! > >>>> > >>> Those algorithms live on in Knuth. He claims they're still relevant, > >>> something about memory access locality. I suspect that's pretty much > >>> nonsense, but they're fun to think about. > >>> > >> Every once in a great while, the logic still come to bear. Doing > >> topological sorts still has uses > >> in determining what should come first if there are options in a directed > >> tree. I have had to use > >> it in some systems modeling applications. > >> > > > > Well, yeah, topological sort is a workhorse. (Offhand, it turns up in > > make and Mercurial. Both have DAGs.) Algorithms generally are > > probably as important now as they ever have been. I just meant the > > tape-sorting algorithms in TaoCP 5.4. > > > > I am probably wrong about those too. I need to reread. > > > > Cheers, > > -j > > > > > > > > > > > > > --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "NLUG" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/nlug-talk?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
