Well, yes, it was. The first computer I actually owned was a PDP-8, essentially stolen in pieces from the DEC scrapyard. Core memory, who would have imagined that it would actually work? I mean, you could actually see the bits. And it had blinking lights, too. I still insist a computer isn't a real computer without blinking lights. Which leads to yet another little side diversion... there was some really fantastic hardware done back in the '70s and '80s, without the benefit of DSPs, FPGAs, or microprocessors that had more power than a modern wristwatch. I love reconditioning equipment from that era, and it's remarkable what could be done with a handful of discrete components that today is done with a million transistors worth of ICs. My oldest working device is a 5061A from '68, not counting useless things like my saturated-cell voltage standard; my favorite is a tie between my HP 5370A and my Solartron 7081 laboratory dvm. Another little gem (in my opinion at least) is the Polarad 632 spectrum analyzer. They're not exceptional by any modern measure, but they're dirt-cheap and do manage better than 120 db noise floor and a 10 Khz to 2 Ghz range. Plus, they have a nifty discrete IC digital video capture board that does scan storage, scan averaging, and peak detection, all without a single microprocessor in sight. Which reminds me, what happened to all that wonderful European engineering from companies like Datron and Solartron? Their equipment frequently beat the pants off of anything we were doing at that time (as I gaze lovingly at my pair of Datron 4910's). Bill Ezell ---------- They said 'Windows or better' so I used Linux.
Dave Mallery wrote: bill but wasn't that hardware beautiful??? (gazes at 11/70 backplane on wall...) dave On Sat, Aug 16, 2008 at 10:10 AM, wje [1]<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: You certainly don't need formal training to be a good programmer; I've seen plenty of code from CS grads that's terrible, and very nice code from art majors. In my book, a good program is one one that's organized logically, well documented, and performs the job it was designed to do. A god programmer is someone that produces such programs. That's it. The problem is that, with the advent PCs and easily-accessible programming tools, everyone thinks they can write code, and many can't. Then what you end up with is a tangled mess that's unmaintainable and indecipherable. It's interesting that any number of EE's will take great care in circuit design, but then throw together some poorly-designed code to run their beautiful circuit. But, this has been endemic in the hardware industry for as long as I've been around. Hardware companies frequently have the attitude that it's the hardware that's important and the software is just one of those minor bits that has to get tacked on. This was true even for some companies that should have known better; there were plenty of HW engineers I ran into back in the old Digital days that, even though they were building minicomputers, really considered software an unfortunate requirement that had to be shipped with their beautiful hardware. Ah well, this is really wandering off-topic and my blood pressure's going up. I think I'll go write some C code for an 8-bit micro to calm down. And yes, I use vi. :) Bill Ezell ---------- They said 'Windows or better' so I used Linux. Scott Newell wrote: At 07:36 AM 8/16/2008, wje wrote: I have both EE and CS degrees, and I work in both worlds. In my humble (but completely accurate and stable) opinion, Basic is not a programming language. It's a tool of Satan designed to convince people that they are programmers when they really should stick to their janitorial duties. This is a subset of the general problem that everyone thinks they are programmers, and usually think their code is perfect. But, that's a rant for a different audience. So, how do you tell if you're not a programmer, but pretending to be one? My code is far from perfect, but it can usually be made to get the job done. I try not to cut too many corners, and the ones that I do cut bother me. But when you're the lone programmer on projects, it's hard to know if you're crummy or decent, since there's no one to measure against. (Of course, there's the metric of 'product shipped, product works, bossman happy, paycheck cashed', but that doesn't distinguish between good and bad programmers, just programmers that can fool others along with themselves.) _______________________________________________ time-nuts mailing list -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe, go to [3]https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts and follow the instructions there. References 1. mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] 2. mailto:time-nuts@febo.com 3. https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts _______________________________________________ time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts@febo.com To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts and follow the instructions there.