I wish I could show you some code that I and others had written in the late sixties and early seventies. The term "Spaghetti Code" was invented to describe the flow charts that were made to document the code. Those charts actually looked like a bowl of spaghetti. There's nothing like it today.
Maintaining code like that was some of the most tedious and frustrating (and sometimes fruitless) work I've ever done.
That all changed with the invention of structured programming (which, btw, does NOT mean "top-down modular"). Today, everyone writes structured code, though they don't know it. But at the time, it was revolutionary. There were even reactionaries who folded their arms and staunchly refused to ever code that way.
When I first learned it, my whole world view changed. Coders were walking around with glassy eyes, amazed that the world had changed so quickly. You have no idea.
Structured programming was the first systematic rejection of goto statements. But even then, it wasn't total. Gotos were still allowed for error conditions. They said, "When there's an error, anything is allowed".
When I started coding in 1966, the only device on my desk was a telephone. Nobody had ever heard of a monitor, and the only keyboards were on keypunch machines (those were the machines that punched holes in cards).
To write a program, you filled out a large form with your code and sent it to the keypunch department. The next day, you got back a deck of cards. You couldn't really do anything with those cards except pass them on to the man who operated the IBM 7044. But first you had to add some more cards to the beginning of the deck to instruct the computer on what to do - such as invoke the FORTRAN compiler, link the result, and run it.
The next day (two days after you wrote the code), you'd get back a printout and two card decks: your original source deck and an object deck (what we now call the object file). The printout (the "listing") showed the results. If there were any compile errors, you repeated the process. It could take a week to get a clean compile.
Lots of things could slow you down. Sometimes I'd get my job back with a note from the operator that said "looping". That meant that he, on his own, had decided that my code was in an infinite loop and had cancelled the job. Those old computers ran only one job at a time - the operator couldn't run my job until yours was finished. So he often had nothing to do but stare at all those flashing lights. When the pattern of flashes repeated itself over and over, he decided that it must be in a loop. Whenever I submitted a large sort, I had to include a note saying "Don't cancel for looping".
I could go on and on. But I remember the day when I experienced the future. I got a consulting job in 1974 to develop code for a Datapoint 2200 (the precursor to the Intel microprocessors). It had a screen and a keyboard and astounded me with instant results. I was so grabbed by the process that I spent a solid seven hours at that computer oblivious to everything but coding and testing. I collapsed on the office couch at the end of that day, but eventually I got used to it. I had no idea at the time, but I had just experienced a typical day in the life of the new developer.
Call George of Redwood KVM at 256-679-6178. He knows everything there is to know about KVMs. Plus he's a super nice guy. He went out of his way to find me a KVM and then refurbish it himself. And then he charged me very little for it.
The trouble with ZeroKnowledge and other such anonymizers is that they will all be illegal under the Cybercrime Treaty. My guess is that the Twin Tower attack has made the treaty a done deal.
Slashdot Mirror
I wish I could show you some code that I and others had written in the late sixties and early seventies. The term "Spaghetti Code" was invented to describe the flow charts that were made to document the code. Those charts actually looked like a bowl of spaghetti. There's nothing like it today.
Maintaining code like that was some of the most tedious and frustrating (and sometimes fruitless) work I've ever done.
That all changed with the invention of structured programming (which, btw, does NOT mean "top-down modular"). Today, everyone writes structured code, though they don't know it. But at the time, it was revolutionary. There were even reactionaries who folded their arms and staunchly refused to ever code that way.
When I first learned it, my whole world view changed. Coders were walking around with glassy eyes, amazed that the world had changed so quickly. You have no idea.
Structured programming was the first systematic rejection of goto statements. But even then, it wasn't total. Gotos were still allowed for error conditions. They said, "When there's an error, anything is allowed".
Although orcas are called "killer whales", they're actually dolphins. See http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/articles/killer-whale-facts/
When I started coding in 1966, the only device on my desk was a telephone. Nobody had ever heard of a monitor, and the only keyboards were on keypunch machines (those were the machines that punched holes in cards).
To write a program, you filled out a large form with your code and sent it to the keypunch department. The next day, you got back a deck of cards. You couldn't really do anything with those cards except pass them on to the man who operated the IBM 7044. But first you had to add some more cards to the beginning of the deck to instruct the computer on what to do - such as invoke the FORTRAN compiler, link the result, and run it.
The next day (two days after you wrote the code), you'd get back a printout and two card decks: your original source deck and an object deck (what we now call the object file). The printout (the "listing") showed the results. If there were any compile errors, you repeated the process. It could take a week to get a clean compile.
Lots of things could slow you down. Sometimes I'd get my job back with a note from the operator that said "looping". That meant that he, on his own, had decided that my code was in an infinite loop and had cancelled the job. Those old computers ran only one job at a time - the operator couldn't run my job until yours was finished. So he often had nothing to do but stare at all those flashing lights. When the pattern of flashes repeated itself over and over, he decided that it must be in a loop. Whenever I submitted a large sort, I had to include a note saying "Don't cancel for looping".
I could go on and on. But I remember the day when I experienced the future. I got a consulting job in 1974 to develop code for a Datapoint 2200 (the precursor to the Intel microprocessors). It had a screen and a keyboard and astounded me with instant results. I was so grabbed by the process that I spent a solid seven hours at that computer oblivious to everything but coding and testing. I collapsed on the office couch at the end of that day, but eventually I got used to it. I had no idea at the time, but I had just experienced a typical day in the life of the new developer.
This would be excellent for rounding up dissidents, like Occupiers and Tea Partiers
Call George of Redwood KVM at 256-679-6178. He knows everything there is to know about KVMs. Plus he's a super nice guy. He went out of his way to find me a KVM and then refurbish it himself. And then he charged me very little for it.
The trouble with ZeroKnowledge and other such anonymizers is that they will all be illegal under the Cybercrime Treaty. My guess is that the Twin Tower attack has made the treaty a done deal.