9 lies programmers tell themselves

InfoWorld ^ | 28 October 2019 | Peter Wayner

[RideForever]

I haven’t seen a Hollerith card in decades!

[stylin19a]

all of our clever code boils down to one bit of doped-up silicon choosing to go left or right down the fork in the code and there is no middle path.

until you start chasin an altered goto.

[MisterArtery]

I started programming in the early ‘60s on an IBM1620 in college. The FORTRAN compiler was a punched card deck of several hundred cards. A fellow student by the last name of Humburg became known as Humbug for his propensity to drop the compiler. Took eight passes trough the card sequencer to rebuild.

[ShadowAce]

What base is that ‘3’ in?

Doesn't matter. It's still 3.

[Still Thinking]

Yes I know, it was a failed attempt at humor.

[ShadowAce]

I always have difficulty recognizing humor on boards like FR.

Sorry. :(

[_Jim]

TI DX10 on a TI990/12 were the best.

DNOS on a DX10 offered almost bulletproof, although slower, execution. This was MULTI-USER not just multitask stuff!

[Still Thinking]

I was thinking like in encryption where you might XOR some plaintext with some keytext, a second XOR returns the original plaintext. Hadn’t seen any applications for three consecutive XORs! ;)

[ImJustAnotherOkie]

Learned that one in IBM 370 assembly language class 101 in 1977.

[Still Thinking]

Pretty slick, I gotta admit!

[Reily]

On cold damp winter days I remember walking across campus with a box of cards. The cards would soak up the moisture in the air and then not fit into the card reader. You then had to let the cards sit for an hour to dry out before they could be read.

[AdmSmith]

Punched card, I used punched tape!

[asinclair]

Interesting that this came from InfoWorld. Back in the day, the magazine never talked about programming. That was left to Byte, Dr Dobbs, and Popular Electronics, among others. Computer "languages" are interesting. And in my career, I have had to move from language to language. So:

• COBOL, so I could help my father with his homework
• BASIC, when a PDP-8 showed up at junior high
• FORTRAN II, because that's what my high school taught.
• PL/I, the "next new thing" (1969)
• 360 Assembler, so I could document a bug I found in the PL/I compiler
• FORTRAN IV
• C, the "next new thing" (1972)
• MIX, because The Art of Computer Programming
• ALGOL, class book assignment -- never used it
• PL/I again, so I could teach a class in the language as part of CS 306, Operating systems.
• GLIPNER, because ILLIAC IV
• LINC microassembler, because there was one in the basement at school
• PASCAL, so I could run my own compiler and run time on a minicomputer
• PL/M, because Intel
• BASIC again, because IBM PC
• PASCAL again, because Perq graphic workstation
• PDP-11 assembler, because there was one down the hall
• 808x assembler, because I could, and various C packages didn't cut it
• PERL, because Unix system administration
• SH and BASH, because Unix system administration
• LEX and YACC, because inventing my own language made particular problems MUCH easier to solve and maintain
• PHP, because commercial Web site
• TCL and EXPECT, because inter-computer automation
• Python, because $DAYJOB loved buzzwords.

And I don't expect that to be the end of the list. Most of these things I have dropped by the wayside.

I have JAVA books, but never took the time to learn the language because I didn't have a need for it. Read the ADA Language Standard, but never had a machine with a compiler to play with.

I keep hearing about other "new" languages that have enhancements for security; someday I'll have a reason to try them. I don't know their names yet.

Quite the parade, isn't it?

[bruin66]

Universal truths:

Constants aren’t.
Variables won’t.

[Larry Lucido]

You can prevent SQL injection by sanitizing your database inputs.

[timestax]

bttt

[ShadowAce]

Your resume looks a lot like mine.

[glock rocks]

My code doesn’t work. I don’t know why.

My code works. I don’t know why.

WYGIWYG.

[Oatka]

I could read a punched card

Bob Newheart having Herman Holerith explain the punch card concept. I haven't seen this since I was in computer school in 1967. It elevated my esteem of Newheart considerably.

Nine and a half minutes long - as as old punch carder, 4:24 brought back memories.

[duckman]

Absolutely priceless and produced by IBM. Newhart said you should probably bring the card to a piano roll company. Cracked me up. Newhart was brilliant and the master of impromptu. Thanx for sharing, brought a lot of memory’s back.