Women...

[fgcason]

Personally, I think we need to get back to the basics, but with Visual Studio, .NET, C#, etc, we've headed pretty far down the line of not caring about how tight the code is.

Visual languages?!?! ...go wash your mouth out with turpentine and goop.
How old are you? 12? That's all bloated nintendo stuff. Get back to the real basics and forget the hobknobber software bunk that even an english major can program.

Hell, the colleges don't even teach an assembly language anymore as a required course. I couldn't even get my university to offer an assembly course as a Special Topics course.

Blasphemy!
Assembly should be mandatory. The less lines of code you generate, the higher your grade. If you can't take a digital logic class, build a primitive functioning computer from TTL parts and wire then write an operating system from scratch with less than 8kb RAM to run it, you flunk out of the degree plan on the spot.

Cue the old timers and stories of trays of unnumbered punch cards falling to the floor.

Punch cards? I remember helping some guy at 11pm that managed to drop a couple boxes of Fortran in the long hallway next to the IBM360/370 mainframe in college. It was a proper mess. The poor guy had been at the cleanup process a while when we ran across him. He was about to cry. It took five of us several hours to sort it out again.
We use to hack the mainframe as a hobby on the weekends. When I say hack, I mean HACK, not todays version of freaking people out and trashing data. We had to write our own code to quietly bypass the sysop and security measures. Today you'd go to jail and they'd throw the jail away and keep the key if you did what we did back then.

REAL PROGRAMMERS don't use pinko computer science languages, they use machine code and write straight to the metal.

How many of todays computer degree wizards can and have built an functioning I/O board for a computer from scratch?

 

[Steve]

Fortran IV

Senior project to punch card a nuclear reactor thermal-hydraulic energy balance program. Ah, Hollerith statements ...@FORSI..lol No wonder so many kids are getting into trouble at college these days ...too much free time not re-punching cards at 3am at the computer center.

Yea James, Aero E 160 and 161. Also wrote a nice FORTRAN program in my Astrodynamics course to find a trajectory to the moon, constrained by a couple of orbital elements. Repetitive loops do wonders to get lots of significant digits!

William, my favorites are the student running across campus with a handful of cards to turn in his final project. Slips/falls, cards fly everywhere, project ruined.

 

[Bill]

Punch cards? I remember helping some guy at 11pm that managed to drop a couple boxes of Fortran in the long hallway next to the IBM360/370 mainframe

I think my favorite college class was System 360/370 Assembly language, and yes, we typed them on card punches. Intel 8088 was also fun, it had a two digit LED readout.

That was a very long time ago, the last time I really knew anything about computers was back in the mid-90's. I was a design engineer out on a special project, and when I got back, my boss took me to a big closet and opened the door on 8 IBM RS-6000's. "I bought these and 8 seats of Cadence Allegro, make it work."

Er, OK. Knew nothing about unix, but had those suckers up and on the token ring fairly quickly, and away we went. I probably don't remember anything about unix at this point...

 

[jesse]

The most poorly written code is generally by small to medium companies designing a software project for a niche market. Quite frankly a large chunk of closed source software (Microsoft..etc) is written like crap. Why? Because the developer is thinking that no one will ever look at it.

Open source is beautiful.
ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/1.5.0.5/source/firefox-1.5.0.5-source.tar.bz2

ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v2.6/linux-2.6.17.tar.gz

There is no ability to hide crappy code.

 

[wbarnhill]

The most poorly written code is generally by small to medium companies designing a software project for a niche market. Quite frankly a large chunk of closed source software (Microsoft..etc) is written like crap. Why? Because the developer is thinking that no one will ever look at it.

Open source is beautiful.
ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/1.5.0.5/source/firefox-1.5.0.5-source.tar.bz2

ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v2.6/linux-2.6.17.tar.gz

There is no ability to hide crappy code.

The bloat and crappy code still exists in open source, the upside though is that others can come behind you and show you how something can be made tighter and better. So the fat can be trimmed in a sense.

 

[jesse]

The bloat and crappy code still exists in open source, the upside though is that others can come behind you and show you how something can be made tighter and better. So the fat can be trimmed in a sense.

The final production ready version of a project is generally much cleaner and refined then the final "production" product of most commercial solutions.

 

[gkainz]

Now this is pretty funny when you click on a thread titled "Women" and read the following last two posts... (at least it's funny to my warped sense of humor!)

The bloat and crappy code still exists in open source, the upside though is that others can come behind you and show you how something can be made tighter and better. So the fat can be trimmed in a sense.

and

The final production ready version of a project is generally much cleaner and refined then the final "production" product of most commercial solutions.

 

[wbarnhill]

Now this is pretty funny when you click on a thread titled "Women" and read the following last two posts... (at least it's funny to my warped sense of humor!)

I'm not even going to try to get into a discussion about whether women are open or closed source.

 

[Henning]

You suppose I can pick up any chicks with this?

No. The chicks without a gag reflex could give a ****l. Introducing them to the mile high club on a beautiful full moon light, that brings out surprising talents in the most unlikely girls.

 

[Henning]

If you look at my screenshot under 'CPU History' you will see eight processors. There is not a girl out there that wouldn't throw herself all over me if I mentioned I was equipped with eight processsors. Or at least that's what happend in my dream

Dude, walk away from the computer. Go build an airplane. Build a little single seat Formula type racer. You can be in one and flying for less than $10k. 200 kts on an O-200 4.5 gph. Mo engine = Mo Speed. Experimental, have lots of fun, fly into airshows. Flying into airshows with something cool is usually good for some hummer in a hangar....

 

[tonycondon]

Once again, Henning is spot on. This guy is a genius!

 

[James_Dean]

No. The chicks without a gag reflex could give a ****l. Introducing them to the mile high club on a beautiful full moon light, that brings out surprising talents in the most unlikely girls.

Henning,

You have a particular way of cutting through the bull. Well done.


James Dean

 

[Henning]

Edit: Language filter violation. Post deleted.
-- Greebo

 

[gkainz]

Post deleted -- Greebo

Oh yeah? Well, I'll see your cases of tape and raise you spools of paper tape from a PDP-11!

 

[jesse]

No. The chicks without a gag reflex could give a ****l. Introducing them to the mile high club on a beautiful full moon light, that brings out surprising talents in the most unlikely girls.

Dude, walk away from the computer. Go build an airplane. Build a little single seat Formula type racer. You can be in one and flying for less than $10k. 200 kts on an O-200 4.5 gph. Mo engine = Mo Speed. Experimental, have lots of fun, fly into airshows. Flying into airshows with something cool is usually good for some hummer in a hangar....

I just knew when I seen your name in this thread it was going to have an interesting response. I don't always have the most fun in my life right now. Infact I tend to have very short bursts of fun and after that it just falls apart.

But without these damn computers. I wouldn't have any money. I'd have a crappy job. I'd be your typical teenage high school drop out with no future. Infact I'd probably either be on probation, in prison, or in jail like my siblings.

Right now I figure I'm trading these years for fun later in my life. The truth of the matter is I am boring to most people my age, especially girls. I accept this and simply have fun with them before they get bored with me. It's a tough call. If I have fun now I'll probably be broke or worse later in life. Or I can simply try to have some fun now but spend the vast majority of my time working in hopes of being able to have whatever I may want later in life.

 

[Greebo]

But without these damn computers. I wouldn't have any money. I'd have a crappy job. I'd be your typical teenage high school drop out with no future. Infact I'd probably either be on probation, in prison, or in jail like my siblings.

Hmm. Keep the computer. The "girls" you'ld meet in prison wouldn't be the kind you want to introduce to mom...

 

[Anthony]

Hmm. Keep the computer. The "girls" you'ld meet in prison wouldn't be the kind you want to introduce to mom...

Yeah, but the prison girls would be a lot more fun. At his age, he shouldn't be worried about what Mom thinks. In fact he should use Mom as a test, if she approves, dump the chick

Everyone should date at least one jailbird from time to time.
Alas, I never have, and regret it to this day.

 

[jesse]

Yeah, but the prison girls would be a lot more fun. At his age, he shouldn't be worried about what Mom thinks. In fact he should use Mom as a test, if she approves, dump the chick

Everyone should date at least one jailbird from time to time.
Alas, I never have, and regret it to this day.

Problem is..the "girls" wouldn't really be girls.

 

[river_rat]

Oh yeah? Well, I'll see your cases of tape and raise you spools of paper tape from a PDP-11!

I used to work for a company that developed an 8" floppy replacement for the paper tape readers.

greg

 

[Greebo]

I used to work for a company that developed an 8" floppy replacement for the paper tape readers.

greg

At this point, I'm glad to say that I'm young enough to never have used an 8" floppy.

My old-tech claim to fame is running a BBS on an Atari 120XE that I upgraded to 256K of RAM (back when "upgrade" meant "soldering iron"), using a 300BPS modem, which drew more traffic than the next most popular IBM-XT based 1200 baud BBS in the area.

 

[tonycondon]

i remember the 4.5 or 5 inch floppies when I was in elementary school, using Apple IIe's. Those were good times.

 

[wsuffa]

At this point, I'm glad to say that I'm young enough to never have used an 8" floppy.

My old-tech claim to fame is running a BBS on an Atari 120XE that I upgraded to 256K of RAM (back when "upgrade" meant "soldering iron"), using a 300BPS modem, which drew more traffic than the next most popular IBM-XT based 1200 baud BBS in the area.

I have an old drive and a box of disks, if you'd like to start now....

I still have the parts for the S-100 based computer (Jade Computer Products) that I built as my first home 'puter.

 

[ScottM]

Just noticing but have any women chimed in yet on this thread???

I don't beilive so and that should tell you something Jessie.

 

[jesse]

Just noticing but have any women chimed in yet on this thread???

I don't beilive so and that should tell you something Jessie.

I posted this thread as a joke...I hope people don't seriously think they are going to get anywhere showing off their computer hardware.

 

[fgcason]

i remember the 4.5 or 5 inch floppies when I was in elementary school, using Apple IIe's. Those were good times.

Apple drives are 5.25" @ 143Kb per side. Single side read/write. Flip the disk over to use the other side. If you run out of disks, plug your tape deck into the tape read/write ports on the back of the machine.

The Apple IIe is an honest computer.

This is currently sitting on my desk in the toy corner:

 

[Ghery]

First computer I used was an IBM System 360 Model 67. CRBE if using a Teletype, otherwise punched cards. That was a LOOOONG time ago.

We had an analog/digital hybrid in the EE dept in college. I never heard of anyone using it in hybrid mode. I took a class on analog computing and we used the analog half. I was one of maybe 3 people in the department who ever touched the digital half. You had to be desperate and the line for a keypunch or turnaround on the 360 had to be really long. Here are the steps to run a FORTRAN job.

1. Load paper tape with an editor. Thank goodness it was an optical reader (faster than mechanical).

2. Create source code. Hope you didn't make any mistakes.

3. Punch source code tape.

4. Load compiler tape.

5. Load source code tape and compile. Pray you don't have any compiler errors, otherwise return to step 1, read in source code tape and edit.

6. Punch object code tape.

7. Load run time module tape.

8. Load object code tape.

9. Run program (you hope).

10. Print out results.

Think this took long to read? Try doing it. You controlled the tape functions and similar stuff from the front panel switches on the console. No operating system at all.

 

[ScottM]

I posted this thread as a joke..

Yeah sure.. that is your story now

 

[p8cleared2land]

Just noticing but have any women chimed in yet on this thread???

I don't beilive so and that should tell you something Jessie.

The less you know about something, the more you like to talk about it. So naturally I couldn't wait to respond to this thread, but didn't have time earlier. Also, I shared some of this before on AOPA.

I was a programmer wannabe. I graduated from college in 1986, but not with a degree in programming. I wanted to be a hacker, and I didn't see Hacker 101 in the course catalog, so I had to do something else. Also, I was confined to Idaho, and there were only two computers in the state at that time. I had no money and drooled over the catalogs of the homebuilt stuff, because it looked like with a little effort a person could almost save fifty bucks making their own computer. In highschool I had dabbled around with the state-of-the-art Commodore 64. In college I worked on a IIe.

Upon graduating, someone gave me some money and I went out a bought the newest thing on the market--an Apple IIgs. (You noticed the reverent hush in my voice as I said his name, didn't you?) By that time I had a couple of little kids and a much-absent husband, so, after I put the kids to bed, I stayed up with IIgs. The memories of the long nights playing are very sweet to me. I also went once a month to Boise to Apple Club meetings. There was a definite underground feel to these meetings, but we never hacked anything important. We mostly just shared tips like, "You know a chip is going bad if you touch it to your lip and it feels hot."

I bought a book: Assembly Language for the Applesoft Programmer. I waded through it, determined to rise to the top in hackerdom. Here is the pinnacle of my achievement:

*FBE2.FBEF
FBE2- A0 C0 A9 0C 20 A8
FBE8- FC AD 30 C0 88 D0 F5 60

type FBE2G, hit RETURN, and...."beep"

It was a no-win situation from the start. I didn't have the equipment, training, or that special chromosome, you know, the z chromosome, that you successful programmers have.

p.s. Hang in there Jesse! Since I have kids older than you, I will just say that you're a nice-looking guy and you will have no problem when the time is right.

p.p.s I still have IIgs and can't bear to part with him.

 

[p8cleared2land]

Apple drives are 5.25" @ 143Kb per side. Single side read/write. Flip the disk over to use the other side.

Don't forget that you had to cut the little notch in the side before flipping.

 

[BEdesigns]

scary!!

 

[flyingcheesehead]

Ha! I was taught FORTRAN last year in my classes at Iowa State! We didnt really have a book though, some notes from the teacher was about it.

Fortran 90 (or is there an even newer one? ) doesn't count.

Did plenty in C++, a fair amount in Pascal, was dragged kicking and screaming through Fortran 77, but my favorite language (from a nostalgia perspective anyway) is Applesoft Basic.

Sometime soon, Objective C is on deck. I'm hoping for a specific announcement at WWDC that would kick me into high gear.

 

[tonycondon]

ya think fortran 90 is what we are using, maybe has been an update since then, but i dont think so

 

[fgcason]

Don't forget that you had to cut the little notch in the side before flipping.

You mean to tell me that you didn't just take a hole punch to the opposite side of the disk cover the moment you took it out of the box the first time?

I was a programmer wannabe. I graduated from college in 1986, but not with a degree in programming. I wanted to be a hacker, and I didn't see Hacker 101 in the course catalog, so I had to do something else.

You just didn't know how to find the course. It was listed as "under cover of night when the sysop is snoozing extra curricular activities" under computer degree. Remind me later. I have a very interesting story about such things... It involves a IBM 360/370 mainframe, an Apple IIe, a TRS-80, a bunch of hacking, Regan-Bush, and a very interesting talk with the computer department senior programmer and the director of student life.

Assembly Language for the Applesoft Programmer.

Oh yea. BTDT.

Currently on my bookshelf next to the Apple:
Assembly Lines: The Book -- you can hurt yourself bad with that one.
Beneath Apple DOS -- file recovery is simple. Trust me, you can make a small fortune off people who screw up their disk with that one.
Apple IIe Technical Reference Manual -- everything you needed to know about IIe hardware.

A while back I waded through 10K of IIe machine code using the above books so DOS could be loaded onto the computer through the serial port - no initial startup disk required to boot... It's excellent for people who have the hardware and blank disks and no useable boot disk.

 

[jesse]

I'm not even going to try to get into a discussion about whether women are open or closed source.

I beleive that women are obviously closed source. Like commercial software the vast majority of the girls that I have dated have cost me a significant amount of money.

I have had many battles with commercial software products that become unstable and simply no longer function. When this happens I find myself in a bad situation. I have no way to support it or repair it. It generally does not output any useful errors. There is absolutely no way to understand it. I'm at the mercy of the software.

If you ever find yourself in a situation with commercial software where the company that developed it is no longer.. The time will come when it quits working. At this point there really is no way to repair it and one must accept their fate and just walk away. This can be a very painful experience as it's hard to walk away from a product that used to work oh so greatly...Once again, this is a common feature of women.

There is a major movement with software. Open source is slowly gaining presence. But the truth of the matter is-- You cannot live without commercial software. You cannot live without women.

 

[tonycondon]

thats pretty good jesse.

 

[fgcason]

It generally does not output any useful errors.

There's the problem right there Jesse. Granted you're trying to be optimistic about the whole situation but from the start you're hoping for useable errors.
Then again, that could be the solution... I'll leave that up to the experts to decide.

You cannot live without commercial software. You cannot live without women.

Crash into the ground or eject without a parachute...choose one.


PARITY CHECK 2
Sometimes the best solution is to bypass the problem completely.

 

[gkainz]

Definitely closed source ....
from the web...

GirlGriend Version 1.0


I'm currently running the latest version of GirlFriend and I've been
having some problems lately. I've been running the same version of
DrinkingBuddies 1.0 forever as my primary application, and all the
GirlFriend releases I've tried have always conflicted with it.

I hear that DrinkingBuddies won't crash if GirlFriend is run in
background mode and the sound is turned off. But I'm embarrassed to
say I can't find the switch to turn the sound off. I just run them
separately, and it works okay.

GirlFriend also seems to have a problem co-existing with my Golf
program, often trying to abort Golf with some sort of timing
incompatibility.

I probably should have stayed with GirlFriend 1.0, but I thought I
might see better performance from GirlFriend 2.0. After months of
conflicts and other problems, I consulted a friend who has had
experience with GirlFriend 2.0. He said I probably didn't have
enough cache to run GirlFriend 2.0, and eventually it would require
a Token Ring to run properly. He was right--as soon as I purged my
cache, it uninstalled itself.

Shortly after that, I installed GirlFriend 3.0 beta. All the bugs
were supposed to be gone, but the first time I used it, it gave me
a virus anyway. I had to clean out my whole system and shut down
for a while.

I very cautiously upgraded to GirlFriend 4.0. This time I used a
SCSI probe first and also installed a virus protection program. It
worked okay for a while until I discovered that GirlFriend 1.0 was
still in my system. I tried running GirlFriend 1.0 again with
GirlFriend 4.0 still installed, but GirlFriend 4.0 has a feature I
didn't know about that automatically senses the presence of any
other version of GirlFriend and communicates with it in some
way, which results in the immediate removal of both versions.

The version I have now works pretty well, but there are still some
problems. Like all versions of GirlFriend, it is written in some
obscure language I can't understand, much less reprogram. Frankly I
think there is too much attention paid to the look and feel rather
than the desired functionality. Also, to get the best connections
with your hardware, you usually have to use gold-plated contacts.
And I've never liked how GirlFriend is totally "object-oriented."

A year ago, a friend of mine upgraded his version of GirlFriend to
GirlFriendPlus 1.0, which is a Terminate and Stay Resident version
of GirlFriend. He discovered that GirlFriendPlus 1.0 expires
within a year if you don't upgrade to Fiancee 1.0. So he did, but
soon after that, he had to upgrade to Wife 1.0, which he describes
as a huge resource hog. It has taken up all his space, so he can't
load anything else. One of the primary reasons he decided to go
with Wife 1.0 was because it came bundled with FreeSexPlus.

Well, it turns out the resource allocation module of Wife 1.0
sometimes prohibits access to FreeSexPlus, particularly the new
Plug-Ins he wanted to try. On top of that, Wife 1.0 must be
running on a well warmed-up system before he can do anything.
Although he did not ask for it, Wife 1.0 came with MotherInLaw 1.0
which has an automatic pop-up feature he can't turn-off.

I told him to try installing Mistress 1.0, but he said he heard if
you try to run it without first uninstalling Wife 1.0, Wife 1.0
will delete MSMoney files before doing the uninstall itself. Then
Mistress 1.0 won't install anyway because of insufficient resources.

I suppose the moral of the story is: know your system's hardware,
it's software requirements and compatibilities and be real careful
about what software you install and when and how you upgrade.

 

[tonycondon]

holy crap greg, im dying laughing at work again...

 

[Anthony]

I told him to try installing Mistress 1.0, but he said he heard if
you try to run it without first uninstalling Wife 1.0, Wife 1.0
will delete MSMoney files before doing the uninstall itself. Then
Mistress 1.0 won't install anyway because of insufficient resources.

Or it quickly installs Elaine Bobbit 1.0 which cuts off your USB cable.

Greg that is priceless!

 

[gkainz]

You know what Elaine said to John before he fell asleep?







"Don't worry. It won't be long now..."