On Friday 10 November 2006 09:45, Carlos E. R. wrote: > > You know, older programmers could have a joke like real programming > was done with physical switches; there were old computers you > actually had to load the initial boot program into memory, > programming word by word flipping switches. Or so I have been told. > Cute :-)
Rank amateurs! I watched as friends flipped switches on their Altairs and SWTP 8080s and kept thinking. "How crude". When the Apple II came out it was, "That's better", so we started importing Apple clones from Taiwan. When big blue got into the act we switched to pc clones. Windows was a huge improvement over whatever was before. When I started working in a computer center we had PDP-8, 11, VAX 11/70 and HP stuff. None used any graphics software until the early 90s and the PDPs needed a bootloader paper (or mylar) tape. I remember the latest and greatest 300MB disk drives that were as small as a washing machine. etc, etc, etc And all during this progression was my "Where's the beef" attitude. I saw vast amounts of software sold that I would have been embarrassed to put my name on because of all the bugs and gotchas. I learned that Bill Gates and Ross Perot weren't computer geniuses, they were marketing geniuses. I found out that I could program but that I could also stick sharp things in my eyes and I didn't like that, either. I learned that if I needed a comp sci degree for a job I could go to one of the gas stations in this 2 college town and hire one for a couple of bucks over minimum wage. Now, after around 30 years of personal computing I am finally starting to see some decent desktops. Linux is, in my shop, a major player but since it still is a M$ world I maintain XP capability. I know that a lot of the software that I see now is a result of CASE tools, which partially explains the bloat that all seem to have. Nobody optimizes anymore. Why should they with memory being so cheap? I remember spending $500 to add a whopping 64 Megs of RAM once and, at the time, that was a bargain. (chips only, no labor) Yeah, I know about keying in a half days work to be able to play command line blackjack and I wouldn't go back to then for anything. Them wasn't the good ol' days, nosiree Bob. Fred An old fart --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
