On 10/01/2015 09:16 PM, Don Y wrote:
Apple products remind me too much of B&O. Too much emphasis on "glitz"
over function. My iPods are tedious to use -- a *mechanical* wheel
(or even a four way navigation bar) would be far more reliable as
an input device than the capacitive "dial" that it employs. Try
using it without WATCHING what you are doing! Ditto for every other
Apple product.

The iShuffle is so simple it isn't difficult to use. However the MP3
players I use most often are Sansas. Plug them into the USB port and
they look like any other mass storage device. iirc I had to use iTunes
to load the iShuffle and iTunes has to be the most complicated,
counter-intuitive software I've ever used.

On 10/01/2015 08:59 PM, Don Y wrote:
Trigraphs would handle that. But, from a telnet session, not an issue.

Trigraphs remind me of the Escape Meta Alt Control Shift thing that
plays Go, tells your fortune, feeds the cat, and is customizable if
you're fluent in Martian.

Funny, that came up in a conversation yesterday when I told another
programmer about APL. That required digraphs on most keyboards and I
mentioned trigraphs. He asked what you'd use those for and when I said
emacs, he shuddered.

On 10/01/2015 09:13 PM, Don Y wrote:
My downside was that clients wanted "repeat business" -- but, that would
just be "another project very similar to the one you just finished".
There's no appeal in that, for me. Sure, LOTS of appeal for client
as I am now a "proven quantity" -- especially for projects of that
sort! But, I'm not going to LEARN anything doing "model 2".

It wasn't all bad but I took one 'three month' project at GE Ft. Wayne
that lasted for over a year. Indiana is a little short on mountains and
trees, both of which are required for my sanity. A year later the guy
called me up again to sort out some BASIC. While I was somewhat happy to
find BASIC had advanced past needing line numbers unraveling somebody
else's mess in a language you're not that familiar with was interesting.
Paid well though and I managed to swing by Mardi Gras on my way back to
New Hampshire.

Yup. I am a terrible manager! My idea as to "management" is that *I*
should facilitate getting whatever resources those "under me" need.
I shouldn't need to monitor their progress (they're PROFESSIONALS, right?)
or track their attendance, hours, etc. This is contrary to what most
employers consider "management responsibilities".

I got drafted into being a manger a few years ago after avoiding it all
my life. The 'junior' programmer has been there 15 years so mostly I
just carry on as a working programmer. Especially with the guys working
on the Android and phone stuff I don't have a clue what they're doing
most of the time. I fix a few of the easier Java bugs every now and
then to retain some familiarity with the code base but I really prefer
languages that start with C -- C, C++, C#. And, no, I've never touched
COBOL.

On 10/01/2015 09:50 PM, Don Y wrote:

The other problem with "commentary" is that it becomes something that
others must "maintain" -- in addition to the code that it documents.

I really like the comments where someone actually put their names or
initials... I had one guy ask about a really twisted interface. When i
pointed out that the comments said he had written it in 1993 he said 'Oh'.

Then there was the guy who wrote some code to insert audit trail
information into a DB2 interface. He managed to hard code his own name
into the SQL insert so it looked like he was the culprit for everything.

On 10/01/2015 09:53 PM, Don Y wrote:
There was a logic family (for sea of gates implementations) called STL.
Basically, single transistors (inverters!) that you would wire together
(on the die) to form gates. Tying collectors together ("wired-or"),
inverting inputs/outputs, etc.

It was grossly inefficient -- but very versatile.

Well when you get down to the nitty gritty a FPGA isn't much more than
that.

On 10/2/2015 7:00 AM, rbowman wrote:

snip

Funny, that came up in a conversation yesterday when I told another
programmer about APL. That required digraphs on most keyboards and I
mentioned trigraphs. He asked what you'd use those for and when I said
emacs, he shuddered.

One CS professor at my university called APL TPL (THE programming
language). He also hosted weekly gatherings at the campus pub, which
were dubbed APL (alcoholic programmers league). It was interesting to
read comments on his obituary page regarding APL
http://www.legacy.com/guestbooks/gainesville/ralph-selfridge-condolences/116883072.

On 10/2/2015 6:51 AM, rbowman wrote:
On 10/01/2015 09:16 PM, Don Y wrote:
Apple products remind me too much of B&O. Too much emphasis on "glitz"
over function. My iPods are tedious to use -- a *mechanical* wheel
(or even a four way navigation bar) would be far more reliable as
an input device than the capacitive "dial" that it employs. Try
using it without WATCHING what you are doing! Ditto for every other
Apple product.

The iShuffle is so simple it isn't difficult to use.

Yes, the iShuffle is the one that looks like a glorified "tie tack"?
(no display, USB connection is made through the *earphone* connector?)

However the MP3 players I use most often are Sansas.

I have two Sansa's. IIRC, one of them needed a "music converter"
to get the tunes into the correct format (?). They also have an
entertaining animation when they power up/down (?)

Plug them into the USB port and they look like any
other mass storage device. iirc I had to use iTunes to load the iShuffle and
iTunes has to be the most complicated, counter-intuitive software I've ever used.

Look into Floola (free) to maintain your iPod(s). iTunes is more of
the "everything Apple" mentality -- make you feel like you are ALWAYS in a
store! MS did something similar with the Zune -- which *could* have
been an interesting device (but for being locked into MS's little world).

On 10/2/2015 7:26 AM, rbowman wrote:
On 10/01/2015 09:50 PM, Don Y wrote:

The other problem with "commentary" is that it becomes something that
others must "maintain" -- in addition to the code that it documents.

I really like the comments where someone actually put their names or
initials... I had one guy ask about a really twisted interface. When i pointed
out that the comments said he had written it in 1993 he said 'Oh'.

I have my VCS put a one-line revision summary in the header commentary
but have moved most of my real comments out of the body of the code.
I figure people can *read* code to see what is being done (unless I'm
doing something insanely tricky) so no need to restate the obvious.
Let the code tell what *it* is doing; let the "offline" comments tell
*why* it's doing it!

I also tend to be very disciplined in how I write -- I don't try to save
keystrokes as if they were made of gold. E.g., lots of parens to
make operator precedence explicit (so folks don't see what they *think*
they see but what the compiler *will* see); lengthy identifiers (yes,
they include vowels so you're not wndrng wht thy hppn 2 b!); and other
"stilted" constructs that are a throwback to my hardware background
(e.g., "&buffer[0]" instead of "buffer")

Then there was the guy who wrote some code to insert audit trail information
into a DB2 interface. He managed to hard code his own name into the SQL insert
so it looked like he was the culprit for everything.

For the most part, I avoid taking EXTRA credit for things. The documentation
makes it clear that I'm the one who *crafted* the algorithms -- even if the
code has been modified over the years. Most folks can only micro-manage
small pieces of algorithms; it's unlikely they are willing to tackle a rewrite
of my VM subsystem thinking they *might* have a better way of doing it! :

I *have* buried little anecdotes in my code, documentation, etc. that
are more "inside jokes" -- to myself. You could stare at them all day
and not see the significance -- they just look like arbitrary
identifiers, strings, numeric constants, etc. (0xDeadBeef)

Most devices I've designed run power up diagnostics to verify the
hardware, sensors, actuators, etc. are operational. One such device
played a few bars of a song after displaying "System Operational":
the lyrics of which were "Well, well, well... you can never tell!"

On 10/2/2015 7:00 AM, rbowman wrote:
On 10/01/2015 08:59 PM, Don Y wrote:
Trigraphs would handle that. But, from a telnet session, not an issue.

Trigraphs remind me of the Escape Meta Alt Control Shift thing that plays Go,
tells your fortune, feeds the cat, and is customizable if you're fluent in
Martian.

Funny, that came up in a conversation yesterday when I told another programmer
about APL. That required digraphs on most keyboards and I mentioned trigraphs.
He asked what you'd use those for and when I said emacs, he shuddered.

I had a Trendata 1200 (aka "Selectric I/O") with an APL typeball.
Not the sort of thing folks were comfortable "reading over your shoulder"
(why does that key generate that weird upside down triangle??")

On Thu, 1 Oct 2015 19:56:55 -0700 (PDT), Uncle Monster
wrote:

On Thursday, October 1, 2015 at 2:46:46 PM UTC-5, wrote:
On Thu, 1 Oct 2015 11:08:18 -0400, "Robert Green"
wrote:

wrote in message
.. .
On Wed, 30 Sep 2015 05:48:01 -0400, "Robert Green"
wrote:

stuff snipped

I am not sure that the PC revolution would have been as remarkable as it
was
without the clones. They enabled a lot more people access to personal
computing than an IBM-only world would have.

I worked for 5 years for a small high-end clone mfg here in Canada -
the first PCs to be sold with a 3 year warranty.
They were really good machines, at a very competetive price, until a
beancounter took over the company with the help of a socalled "Harvard
MBA" - between the 2 they killed the quality and bled the company into
backrupsy within about 3 years. (I was gone in about 1 1/2)

Those same bean counters ran through my old employer's company destroying
value while alleging to make us more efficient. I think they're soon to
collapse with the coming changes in government contracting.

Compatibility-wise, I think the clones (good ones, anyway) really helped
move the PC revolution along. My first *real* IBM PC cost over $5,000 (this
is when full height diskette drives were also about $600). The clones
helped force prices of all peripherals out of the IBM stratosphere and into
the real world. Eventually I was buying the surplus IBM half-height
diskette drives (from the botched PC JR) for $40 - quite a drop from $600.

Some of the clones offered options that even IBM didn't. One board I bought
had 8 sockets for BIOS chips. That really fascinated my friend who liked to
program in assembler.

Another AT clone had a CPU that wasn't artificially prevented from running
at 8MHz like the IBM AT was for a while.

IIRC, the ultimate test of a PC's compatibility was:

"Can it run flight simulator?"
We has 20Mhz PCs using Harris chips - and we built 12mhz ATs whenIBM
was doing good to get 8 - and soon had 24s running stable, and selling
for less than "Big Blue" sold their 8.
We also had CDRom long before IBM did - as well as providing larger
hard drives. Lots of features that pushed "big Blue" ahead. The Tier 2
mfgs were also technically "clones" - including AST, Packard Bell,
Compaq, HP, Sanyo, etc.

All Trillium clones passed ALL compatability tests.

Do you remember the AT&T PC's? I had one of those Italian made PC6300 critters in the herd of early personal computers I once owned. The PC's were well made as far as PC clones were but had their own quirks. I remember seeing them hooked up to AT&T switches as an interface. I think Xerox had a version too. ^_^

[8~{} Uncle PC Monster
The one that was built upside-down and inside-out?? Motherboard on
the top if I remember corectly - strange critters they were.

On Thu, 01 Oct 2015 21:10:05 -0600, rbowman
wrote:

On 10/01/2015 12:49 PM, Don Y wrote:
Zilog's most coloosal blunder was in not leveraging their Z80
successes (Z280, Z8000, Z80000, Z380, etc.) effectively.
They had to rely on Hitachi to breathe continued life into
the family with the '180 devices...

They tried. I was somewhat ****ed when IBM put the Good Housekeping Seal
of Approval on the 8088 piece of crap rather than the Z8000. Turns out
Exxon had bought a major stake in Zilog and IBM was in a ****ing contest
with Exxon so the Z8000 was never on the table. The 68008 had been
considered but IBM didn't think Motorola could reliably supply parts. At
that time Motorola had a bad rep of hanging you out to dry if they got a
massive contract from the auto industry.

A well earned reputation too.

I still have a Captain Zilog t-shirt around here someplace.

On Thu, 01 Oct 2015 21:23:25 -0600, rbowman
wrote:

On 10/01/2015 01:56 PM, wrote:
I "cut my teeth" on Motorola 6809 code.

I had a 68000 development board when they first came out, but missed the
6800, 6809, HC08, HC11 and the rest. No particular reason, I just went
down the Intel/Zilog path instead. In later years I went with Atmel
rather than PIC. Again, no particular reason.
Programming on the Moto processors was a lot easier - direct
addressing with no offsets - no reverse polish notation.

On Thu, 01 Oct 2015 21:31:41 -0600, rbowman
wrote:

On 10/01/2015 01:46 PM, wrote:
The Tier 2
mfgs were also technically "clones" - including AST, Packard Bell,
Compaq, HP, Sanyo, etc.

A moment of silence for DEC...
We built some of the last DEC PCs for them.

On Friday, October 2, 2015 at 12:18:22 PM UTC-5, wrote:
On Thu, 1 Oct 2015 19:56:55 -0700 (PDT), Uncle Monster
wrote:

On Thursday, October 1, 2015 at 2:46:46 PM UTC-5, wrote:
On Thu, 1 Oct 2015 11:08:18 -0400, "Robert Green"
wrote:

wrote in message
.. .
On Wed, 30 Sep 2015 05:48:01 -0400, "Robert Green"
wrote:

stuff snipped

I am not sure that the PC revolution would have been as remarkable as it
was
without the clones. They enabled a lot more people access to personal
computing than an IBM-only world would have.

I worked for 5 years for a small high-end clone mfg here in Canada -
the first PCs to be sold with a 3 year warranty.
They were really good machines, at a very competetive price, until a
beancounter took over the company with the help of a socalled "Harvard
MBA" - between the 2 they killed the quality and bled the company into
backrupsy within about 3 years. (I was gone in about 1 1/2)

Those same bean counters ran through my old employer's company destroying
value while alleging to make us more efficient. I think they're soon to
collapse with the coming changes in government contracting.

Compatibility-wise, I think the clones (good ones, anyway) really helped
move the PC revolution along. My first *real* IBM PC cost over $5,000 (this
is when full height diskette drives were also about $600). The clones
helped force prices of all peripherals out of the IBM stratosphere and into
the real world. Eventually I was buying the surplus IBM half-height
diskette drives (from the botched PC JR) for $40 - quite a drop from $600.

Some of the clones offered options that even IBM didn't. One board I bought
had 8 sockets for BIOS chips. That really fascinated my friend who liked to
program in assembler.

Another AT clone had a CPU that wasn't artificially prevented from running
at 8MHz like the IBM AT was for a while.

IIRC, the ultimate test of a PC's compatibility was:

"Can it run flight simulator?"
We has 20Mhz PCs using Harris chips - and we built 12mhz ATs whenIBM
was doing good to get 8 - and soon had 24s running stable, and selling
for less than "Big Blue" sold their 8.
We also had CDRom long before IBM did - as well as providing larger
hard drives. Lots of features that pushed "big Blue" ahead. The Tier 2
mfgs were also technically "clones" - including AST, Packard Bell,
Compaq, HP, Sanyo, etc.

All Trillium clones passed ALL compatability tests.

Do you remember the AT&T PC's? I had one of those Italian made PC6300 critters in the herd of early personal computers I once owned. The PC's were well made as far as PC clones were but had their own quirks. I remember seeing them hooked up to AT&T switches as an interface. I think Xerox had a version too. ^_^

[8~{} Uncle PC Monster
The one that was built upside-down and inside-out?? Motherboard on
the top if I remember corectly - strange critters they were.

Yea, they were manufactured by Olivetti so I suppose they were supposed to be weird. ^_^

[8~{} Uncle Italian Monster

On 10/2/2015 7:17 AM, rbowman wrote:
On 10/01/2015 09:13 PM, Don Y wrote:
My downside was that clients wanted "repeat business" -- but, that would
just be "another project very similar to the one you just finished".
There's no appeal in that, for me. Sure, LOTS of appeal for client
as I am now a "proven quantity" -- especially for projects of that
sort! But, I'm not going to LEARN anything doing "model 2".

It wasn't all bad but I took one 'three month' project at GE Ft. Wayne that
lasted for over a year. Indiana is a little short on mountains and trees, both
of which are required for my sanity.

Yeah, I turned down a job offer designing televisions in Indiana. Didn't
look like a place I'd want to spend much time -- let alone *live*!
(apologies to folks there!)

A year later the guy called me up again to
sort out some BASIC. While I was somewhat happy to find BASIC had advanced past
needing line numbers unraveling somebody else's mess in a language you're not
that familiar with was interesting. Paid well though and I managed to swing by
Mardi Gras on my way back to New Hampshire.

Puzzles (for the sake of being a puzzle) have only limited appeal. I've had to
reverse engineer projects from bare metal (draw schematic from an analysis
of foils, decompile software from ROM dumps, etc.). The first time is
challenging. The second is just tedious (you already *know* you CAN do this
so a lot of emphasis goes on the "Why" you're doing it -- again!)

Yup. I am a terrible manager! My idea as to "management" is that *I*
should facilitate getting whatever resources those "under me" need.
I shouldn't need to monitor their progress (they're PROFESSIONALS, right?)
or track their attendance, hours, etc. This is contrary to what most
employers consider "management responsibilities".

I got drafted into being a manger a few years ago after avoiding it all my
life. The 'junior' programmer has been there 15 years so mostly I just carry on
as a working programmer. Especially with the guys working on the Android and
phone stuff I don't have a clue what they're doing most of the time. I fix a
few of the easier Java bugs every now and then to retain some familiarity with
the code base but I really prefer languages that start with C -- C, C++, C#.
And, no, I've never touched COBOL.

I prefer C to any of the others as it lets me imagine what code the compiler
is *likely* to generate. I don't have to worry that some anonymous object
is being constructed "between the lines" or some overloaded cast is
burning hundreds of machine cycles between one arithmetic operator and
the next, etc. (I do real-time embedded systems)

Presently using C, ASM, Limbo (C-ish) and SQL on my current project.
Makes it interesting to keep track of what's "legal" at any given time! :

On Fri, 2 Oct 2015 09:23:50 -0400, Ed Pawlowski wrote:

On 10/1/2015 11:31 PM, rbowman wrote:
On 10/01/2015 01:46 PM, wrote:
The Tier 2
mfgs were also technically "clones" - including AST, Packard Bell,
Compaq, HP, Sanyo, etc.

A moment of silence for DEC...

DEC, DG, Wang are at the forefront of technology. Big (and smart)
companies that will go on forever.

Sorry, it was Data General we made the PCs for, not Digital Equipment
- - -

As Ken Olsen wisely pointed out "why would anyone want a computer on
their desk?" Such a great vision.

On 10/2/2015 10:24 AM, wrote:
On Thu, 01 Oct 2015 21:23:25 -0600, rbowman
wrote:

On 10/01/2015 01:56 PM, wrote:
I "cut my teeth" on Motorola 6809 code.

I had a 68000 development board when they first came out, but missed the
6800, 6809, HC08, HC11 and the rest. No particular reason, I just went
down the Intel/Zilog path instead. In later years I went with Atmel
rather than PIC. Again, no particular reason.
Programming on the Moto processors was a lot easier - direct
addressing with no offsets - no reverse polish notation.

The 32K was better, still! None of the address/data register
schizophrenia!

On Thursday, September 24, 2015 at 8:39:02 AM UTC-7, leza wang wrote:
Sorry for off topic
-------------------

Hi

A friend of mine who is a senior citizen and want to buy a new car to replace her standard old car. She is very good driver with very clean driving history. Her current car is Volkswagen golf. She is thinking of buying a new Volkswagen golf but automatic of course (easier to drive). Do you have any other recommendation on which car (brand name) she should consider. Too many options and technologies are not really required, just basic stuff but most be automatic.

The best hatchbacks are probably the VW Golf, Mazda3, Hyundai
Elantra GT, and Ford Focus. The Golf and Focus are the quietest
and best riding, but neither is reliable, and VW parts can be
the most expensive. The Honda Fit would be great if it wasn't
so loud and rough riding. If she doesn't mind sedans, a
Toyota Corolla or Subaru Impreza might be good, but sedans are
worse than ever for cargo because trunk lids have become shorter,
making it harder to get large cargo in and out.

writes:
On Fri, 2 Oct 2015 09:23:50 -0400, Ed Pawlowski wrote:

On 10/1/2015 11:31 PM, rbowman wrote:
On 10/01/2015 01:46 PM, wrote:
The Tier 2
mfgs were also technically "clones" - including AST, Packard Bell,
Compaq, HP, Sanyo, etc.

A moment of silence for DEC...

DEC, DG, Wang are at the forefront of technology. Big (and smart)
companies that will go on forever.

Sorry, it was Data General we made the PCs for, not Digital Equipment

This all leaves out so much computing history:

Electrodata (late 50's) 220
Burroughs B5000/B5500/B300/B3500 (early 60's)
GE-600 series (GE-635 was the internet equivalent in 1965)
CDC-6600 (PLATO was the internet equivalent in the 1970's)
Honeywell (nee Datamatic) 800, 200, DPS systems
IBM 1401, 7094
RCA Spectra 70, RCA series
NCR 315 (1962)
ICL
Groupe Bull
Univac III, 1100/2200

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PLATO_(computer_system)

On 10/2/2015 11:18 AM, Scott Lurndal wrote:
writes:
On Fri, 2 Oct 2015 09:23:50 -0400, Ed Pawlowski wrote:

On 10/1/2015 11:31 PM, rbowman wrote:
On 10/01/2015 01:46 PM, wrote:
The Tier 2
mfgs were also technically "clones" - including AST, Packard Bell,
Compaq, HP, Sanyo, etc.

A moment of silence for DEC...

DEC, DG, Wang are at the forefront of technology. Big (and smart)
companies that will go on forever.

Sorry, it was Data General we made the PCs for, not Digital Equipment

This all leaves out so much computing history:

Electrodata (late 50's) 220
Burroughs B5000/B5500/B300/B3500 (early 60's)

The 5500 was an interesting machine in how it dynamically
maintained dependencies between (independent) "execution units"

GE-600 series (GE-635 was the internet equivalent in 1965)

And, of course, Mutt Licks! Too bad no one has tried to port
it to more modern hardware (36b is a wee bit odd!)

CDC-6600 (PLATO was the internet equivalent in the 1970's)

Mmmmm.... "Empire"! ;-)

Honeywell (nee Datamatic) 800, 200, DPS systems
IBM 1401, 7094
RCA Spectra 70, RCA series
NCR 315 (1962)
ICL
Groupe Bull
Univac III, 1100/2200

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PLATO_(computer_system)

Don Y writes:
On 10/2/2015 11:18 AM, Scott Lurndal wrote:
writes:
On Fri, 2 Oct 2015 09:23:50 -0400, Ed Pawlowski wrote:

On 10/1/2015 11:31 PM, rbowman wrote:
On 10/01/2015 01:46 PM, wrote:
The Tier 2
mfgs were also technically "clones" - including AST, Packard Bell,
Compaq, HP, Sanyo, etc.

A moment of silence for DEC...

DEC, DG, Wang are at the forefront of technology. Big (and smart)
companies that will go on forever.

Sorry, it was Data General we made the PCs for, not Digital Equipment

This all leaves out so much computing history:

Electrodata (late 50's) 220
Burroughs B5000/B5500/B300/B3500 (early 60's)

The 5500 was an interesting machine in how it dynamically
maintained dependencies between (independent) "execution units"

GE-600 series (GE-635 was the internet equivalent in 1965)

And, of course, Mutt Licks! Too bad no one has tried to port
it to more modern hardware (36b is a wee bit odd!)

In addition to Multics, Dartmouth Basic was developed on the 635.


CDC-6600 (PLATO was the internet equivalent in the 1970's)

Mmmmm.... "Empire"! ;-)

I prefered DnD, myself.

And Notes was a direct predecessor of Usenet.

On 10/2/2015 1:13 PM, Scott Lurndal wrote:
Don Y writes:
On 10/2/2015 11:18 AM, Scott Lurndal wrote:
writes:
On Fri, 2 Oct 2015 09:23:50 -0400, Ed Pawlowski wrote:

On 10/1/2015 11:31 PM, rbowman wrote:
On 10/01/2015 01:46 PM, wrote:
The Tier 2
mfgs were also technically "clones" - including AST, Packard Bell,
Compaq, HP, Sanyo, etc.

A moment of silence for DEC...

DEC, DG, Wang are at the forefront of technology. Big (and smart)
companies that will go on forever.

Sorry, it was Data General we made the PCs for, not Digital Equipment

This all leaves out so much computing history:

Electrodata (late 50's) 220
Burroughs B5000/B5500/B300/B3500 (early 60's)

The 5500 was an interesting machine in how it dynamically
maintained dependencies between (independent) "execution units"

GE-600 series (GE-635 was the internet equivalent in 1965)

And, of course, Mutt Licks! Too bad no one has tried to port
it to more modern hardware (36b is a wee bit odd!)

In addition to Multics, Dartmouth Basic was developed on the 635.

Oh, I didn't realize that. I'd have imagined a smaller machine!

CDC-6600 (PLATO was the internet equivalent in the 1970's)

Mmmmm.... "Empire"! ;-)

I prefered DnD, myself.

The plasma displays were just *so* appropriate for Empire!

And Notes was a direct predecessor of Usenet.

On 10/02/2015 07:23 AM, Ed Pawlowski wrote:
DEC, DG, Wang are at the forefront of technology. Big (and smart)
companies that will go on forever.

As Ken Olsen wisely pointed out "why would anyone want a computer on
their desk?" Such a great vision.

Nothing like going from 'America's most successful entrepreneur' to
'what an idiot' in a few short years.

There is also a legend that Ward Christensen's proudest possession is a
memo from his boss at IBM telling him if he wanted to mess around with
8080's on his own time it was okay but the microprocessors were never
going to go anyplace.

IBM is about the only dinosaur left standing and I'm not sure why. 15
years ago all our clients were running RS/6000 systems and we were
developing for AIX. I can't remember the last time we did an AIX build
and we shut down the last RS/6000 boxes three years ago. They may or may
not boot anymore but it's an academic question.

They were nice systems but when dealing with IBM you always got the idea
you were dealing with the red headed step child division until you saw
the invoice.

On 10/02/2015 03:12 AM, Jack wrote:
Dad starts a business, devotes all his time and energy to it and ignores
his kids.
As we all know, ignored children are often under-performers.

The owner of the first company I worked for had been an engineer at GE,
took an idea GE didn't think was worth pursuing, and turned it into a
good sized enterprise. Son #1 turned out to have the hobby of raping
middle aged women in parking lots. He was never found legally guilty but
decided to live 1200 miles away from upstate NY. #2 wasn't doing too
well in a junior college meat cutting course so he dropped out and
became a VP. #3 was actually human and stayed away from the circus.

The old man drove his Lincoln into the garage one night, closed the
door, and forgot to turn the engine off. I wondered if he'd been happier
just drawing a GE check.

On 10/2/2015 6:49 PM, rbowman wrote:
On 10/02/2015 07:23 AM, Ed Pawlowski wrote:
DEC, DG, Wang are at the forefront of technology. Big (and smart)
companies that will go on forever.

As Ken Olsen wisely pointed out "why would anyone want a computer on
their desk?" Such a great vision.

Nothing like going from 'America's most successful entrepreneur' to 'what an
idiot' in a few short years.

There is also a legend that Ward Christensen's proudest possession is a memo
from his boss at IBM telling him if he wanted to mess around with 8080's on his
own time it was okay but the microprocessors were never going to go anyplace.

IBM is about the only dinosaur left standing and I'm not sure why. 15 years ago
all our clients were running RS/6000 systems and we were developing for AIX. I
can't remember the last time we did an AIX build and we shut down the last
RS/6000 boxes three years ago. They may or may not boot anymore but it's an
academic question.

They were nice systems but when dealing with IBM you always got the idea you
were dealing with the red headed step child division until you saw the invoice.

IBM has a constancy. There is little fear that they are going to
"go away" and leave you "hanging".

The first time a client asked me, straight out, "What do we do if you get
hit by a bus?", I laughed. I thought it a joke. But, realized he was
deadly serious -- what *would* they do if I got hit by a bus? Sure, I
could arrange for all of the work I'd done for them (even those things
for which I'd not yet been *paid*!) to exist in an escrow account in
their behalf. But, there's no *entity* ready to step into my shoes
and finish the work -- in anything akin to the timetable on which they
had initially planned!

With IBM, if your tech/salesperson/rep got hit by a bus, a new "droid"
would magically appear and introduce itself to you. Nothing for you
to "worry about".

IBM's designs (those that I've been exposed to) are also pretty "vanilla".
And, their "process" is significantly disciplined so there isn't much
risk of something existing *solely* in ONE GUY'S head (making that
guy indispensible).

All of these things conspire to leave you with a reasonably "safe"
path forward -- regardless of what might befall the company or
its employees.

On 10/02/2015 08:57 AM, sms wrote:
One CS professor at my university called APL TPL (THE programming language).

Nah, PL/I is TPL. IBM was always humble naming their languages.

Then there is the TIL, FORTH. Charlie Moore isn't too modest either. I
had people pay me real money to use that one at least.

On 10/02/2015 11:28 AM, Don Y wrote:
Yeah, I turned down a job offer designing televisions in Indiana. Didn't
look like a place I'd want to spend much time -- let alone *live*!
(apologies to folks there!)

It was different. There actually was a lot to do, buckskinner rendevous,
all sorts of car racing, museums, etc. Fairmount had a big James Dean
festival since that was his boyhood hometown. I caught Bill Monroe down
in Beanblossom before the place went upscale. Auburn has a great car
museum. Some people in a little town near Ft. Wayne restored a steam
engine and some of the fancy old passenger cars, and would take it for a
spin every now and then. I took it down along the Wabash to Peru where
the Circus Hall of Fame is. There were a couple of tunnels and they'd
pull through, let everyone out, back up, and come out again so the train
nuts had a photo op of a steamer coming out of a tunnel.

Except for the southern part down near Nashville it was real short on
trees and hills. I learned to fly in the Vermont mountains but Indiana
really spooked me. You could land almost anyplace in an emergency
instead of trying to land on the side of a tree covered mountain but
there was just too much nothing.

I'll also mention in passing that it was the most Christian place I've
ever lived.

I prefer C to any of the others as it lets me imagine what code the
compiler
is *likely* to generate. I don't have to worry that some anonymous object
is being constructed "between the lines" or some overloaded cast is
burning hundreds of machine cycles between one arithmetic operator and
the next, etc. (I do real-time embedded systems)

Working with C and ASM has made me cynical. I look at syntactic sugar
like try/catch constructs and my mind says 'there's a prettified goto in
there someplace'.

Presently using C, ASM, Limbo (C-ish) and SQL on my current project.
Makes it interesting to keep track of what's "legal" at any given time! :

I haven't used Limbo, but I know more about ODBC than i ever wanted to.
We have a separate department that handle the records management heavy
lifting but somebody had to populate the tables with the live data and
that somebody is usually me.

We're looking at a web interface so I've also been playing with
JavaScript in all its glory. There are a lot of ways to skin the cat,
both server side and client side, and I'm trying to pick the method that
isn't going to fade into the sunset like Silverlight.

On 10/02/2015 11:12 AM, Don Y wrote:
I have my VCS put a one-line revision summary in the header commentary
but have moved most of my real comments out of the body of the code.
I figure people can *read* code to see what is being done (unless I'm
doing something insanely tricky) so no need to restate the obvious.
Let the code tell what *it* is doing; let the "offline" comments tell
*why* it's doing it!

Use the source, Luke. We have tech writers doing documentation but when
the QA or Ops people ask me a question i usually head right to the
source. It doesn't lie about what it's doing.


I also tend to be very disciplined in how I write -- I don't try to save
keystrokes as if they were made of gold. E.g., lots of parens to
make operator precedence explicit (so folks don't see what they *think*
they see but what the compiler *will* see); lengthy identifiers (yes,
they include vowels so you're not wndrng wht thy hppn 2 b!); and other
"stilted" constructs that are a throwback to my hardware background
(e.g., "&buffer[0]" instead of "buffer")

Man after my own heart. The older I get, the more verbose my code gets.
We had one guy who must have thought he'd get billed by the character.
The first time I saw his code it took me a while to figure out what ary
was.

He also constructed this, er, thing to parse a homegrown configuration
language that was mostly generated by macros. I forget if it was
Kernighan or Ritchie who said if they'd realized what people would do
with macros they would have never made it into the language. He also
managed to incorporate lex, yacc, and a couple of big, smelly, hairy
bisons into the mess. I think every non-trivial project has areas of the
codebase where everyone fears to tread, and that's one of them.

He had been a CS instructor at the local U and some of the people who
took his classes said he was a stickler for comments, but he certainly
didn't practice what he preached.

On 10/02/2015 10:59 AM, Don Y wrote:
Yes, the iShuffle is the one that looks like a glorified "tie tack"?
(no display, USB connection is made through the *earphone* connector?)

That's the one.

However the MP3 players I use most often are Sansas.

I have two Sansa's. IIRC, one of them needed a "music converter"
to get the tunes into the correct format (?). They also have an
entertaining animation when they power up/down (?)

I never ran into that. I'm a dinosaur so I buy CDs mostly and rip them.
I just copy the mp3 files over. I've got an old Creative Zen Nano that
is the same.

On 10/02/2015 11:24 AM, wrote:
Programming on the Moto processors was a lot easier - direct
addressing with no offsets - no reverse polish notation.

Did I mention I've done a bit of FORTH programming I even have an old
HP 16C programmer's calculator. Great fun leaving that lying around and
watching someone try to use it. For extra credit, leave it set to hex.
5 5 + A ???? WTF?

On 10/02/2015 11:24 AM, wrote:
We built some of the last DEC PCs for them.

They weren't bad but DEC shot themselves with that ploy of having
pre-formatted floppies only available through DEC. Anybody who lived
through the CP/M era with the 23 different formats because everyone
tweaked the WD2791 a little different wasn't buying into another
proprietary format.

At one point we we assembling cables for DEC Augusta. The QA was strict
but we finally got a crew that put out cables with almost no rejects.
Then the plant manager got the bright idea that they should give the
contract to a Native American operation in interest of diversity. I'll
leave it to your imagination how well that worked out.

On 10/02/2015 11:28 AM, wrote:
Sorry, it was Data General we made the PCs for, not Digital Equipment

Another footnote. I got a kick out of Dukakis campaigning on the
'Massachusetts Miracle' when everybody in the industry knew the miracle
was rapidly turning to a debacle. Personally, I decided to retire for a
while and left New Hampshire in '88 looking for greener pastures.

On 10/02/2015 02:13 PM, Scott Lurndal wrote:
In addition to Multics, Dartmouth Basic was developed on the 635.

And a dark day that was.

On 10/2/2015 8:58 PM, rbowman wrote:
On 10/02/2015 11:12 AM, Don Y wrote:
I have my VCS put a one-line revision summary in the header commentary
but have moved most of my real comments out of the body of the code.
I figure people can *read* code to see what is being done (unless I'm
doing something insanely tricky) so no need to restate the obvious.
Let the code tell what *it* is doing; let the "offline" comments tell
*why* it's doing it!

Use the source, Luke. We have tech writers doing documentation but when the QA
or Ops people ask me a question i usually head right to the source. It doesn't
lie about what it's doing.

The problem is that you can't (practically) say much in the code's
commentary. It's limited to text (no real graphics, multimedia, etc.).

So, if I tell you that this piece of code implements the "a" in "mash"
sound, how do you UNAMBIGUOUSLY know what that means? If you're
from the midwest/Ohio valley areas, chances are, you pronounce
this as "MAYSH"; I, OTOH, pronounce it similar to the "a" sound in "at"
(not "ATE")

Likewise, I can't easily explain why I've implemented a resonator in
a particular way without a long description of the performance tradeoffs
of other, more straightforward approaches. Or, a detailed analysis of
the error budget in each approach, etc.

Put these sorts of things *in* the code and folks' eyes gloss over
before they get to main()...

Also, removing the bulk of the commentary from the code means you can fit
more (code!) on a "page". I really like the "make a complete thought
fit on a single page" philosophy.

[I wrote a driver for half-inch, 9-track tape many years ago -- the
sort of cheesy tape drives you saw in 1960's sci-fi movies? A big
part of the project was sorting out the roles of the various bits of
electronics in a "tape subsystem": there's a "controller"/interface
in the host computer; tape "transports" that actually have the tape
reels, read/write/erase heads, etc.; and a "formatter" that is
the brains of the subsystem -- controlling up to 4 transports. The
first four or five, single-spaced pages of the driver were a detailed
description of these roles -- essential so you knew why the driver *could*
do some things -- like "read reverse" -- and why it could support
*certain* operations in parallel, but not others. Once you understood
the roles of the various components in the subsystem, it made sense.
Without that basic foundation, the code looked like a hodgepodge of
assorted optimizations -- hile MISSING certain other optimizations that
you might think *should* be possible!]

I also tend to be very disciplined in how I write -- I don't try to save
keystrokes as if they were made of gold. E.g., lots of parens to
make operator precedence explicit (so folks don't see what they *think*
they see but what the compiler *will* see); lengthy identifiers (yes,
they include vowels so you're not wndrng wht thy hppn 2 b!); and other
"stilted" constructs that are a throwback to my hardware background
(e.g., "&buffer[0]" instead of "buffer")

Man after my own heart. The older I get, the more verbose my code gets. We had
one guy who must have thought he'd get billed by the character. The first time
I saw his code it took me a while to figure out what ary was.

My hardware designs are similarly highly structured. E.g., I tend
to favor fully synchronous implementations so "CLK" goes EVERYWHERE
with the control logic acting mainly to *enable* particular actions
"on the next CLK edge".

I had a buddy take over a gate array design I was working on. When
I touched base with him a few weeks later and asked if he'd had
any problems, he said, "It took me a while to sort out what you were
doing. But, once I saw how you approached each module, it all was
very obvious!"

I figure that was a compliment.

I eschew single letter identifiers preferring, instead, more informative
names: iterator, index, row, column, etc. I find it makes it easier to
"read" (subvocalize) the code and impart meaning to it in the reading.

He also constructed this, er, thing to parse a homegrown configuration language
that was mostly generated by macros. I forget if it was Kernighan or Ritchie
who said if they'd realized what people would do with macros they would have
never made it into the language. He also managed to incorporate lex, yacc, and
a couple of big, smelly, hairy bisons into the mess. I think every non-trivial
project has areas of the codebase where everyone fears to tread, and that's one
of them.

By putting all the "explanation/rationale" in external documents, when
I approach a "here there be dragons" area in the code, I can simply
state that ("Here there be dragons") and point the reader to the applicable
portion of the accompanying document for the questions he *should* be
asking -- but probably hasn't realized, yet -- along with their explanations.

I also try to make those documents "drive" the code. E.g., I have
a document that enumerates the various "rules" (templates) that
my TTS code uses to convert graphemes to phonemes. This document
uses "industry standard" (linguistic!) symbols for the sounds
involved (e.g., the schwa sound is a "rolled" 'e') as someone with
*that* sort of training would be the logical target of such a document.
Modifying the tables in that *document* causes the const structs that
are embedded in my code to reflect those changes -- without requiring
the developer (coder) to understand their significance, encoding, etc.

(Why does the 'w' sound change in "why", "what", "which", "women", "where",
"we", etc.?)

He had been a CS instructor at the local U and some of the people who took his
classes said he was a stickler for comments, but he certainly didn't practice
what he preached.

On 10/02/2015 08:35 PM, Don Y wrote:
IBM has a constancy. There is little fear that they are going to
"go away" and leave you "hanging".

Like they say, nobody ever got fired for choosing IBM. Or, these days,
Windows.

On 2015-10-03, rbowman wrote:
Nothing like going from 'America's most successful entrepreneur' to
'what an idiot' in a few short years.

Ken Olsen was correct, just ahead of his time, as evidenced by the growing
popularity of so-called "cloud computing." Most people really do not want
the hassle and responsibility that having their own computer entails. What
they really want is the capability, but provided by a terminal that is
easy to use and as maintenance-free as possible with someone else handling
the messy details of security, backups, etc. on the other end.

--
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Roger Blake (Change "invalid" to "com" for email. Google Groups killfiled.)

NSA sedition and treason -- http://www.DeathToNSAthugs.com
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

On Friday, October 2, 2015 at 11:15:05 PM UTC-5, rbowman wrote:
On 10/02/2015 11:24 AM, wrote:
We built some of the last DEC PCs for them.

They weren't bad but DEC shot themselves with that ploy of having
pre-formatted floppies only available through DEC. Anybody who lived
through the CP/M era with the 23 different formats because everyone
tweaked the WD2791 a little different wasn't buying into another
proprietary format.

At one point we we assembling cables for DEC Augusta. The QA was strict
but we finally got a crew that put out cables with almost no rejects.
Then the plant manager got the bright idea that they should give the
contract to a Native American operation in interest of diversity. I'll
leave it to your imagination how well that worked out.

Political Correctness and Affirmative Action wrecked another company, eh? o_O

[8~{} Uncle Non PC Monster

On 10/2/2015 9:30 PM, Roger Blake wrote:
On 2015-10-03, rbowman wrote:
Nothing like going from 'America's most successful entrepreneur' to
'what an idiot' in a few short years.

Ken Olsen was correct, just ahead of his time, as evidenced by the growing
popularity of so-called "cloud computing." Most people really do not want
the hassle and responsibility that having their own computer entails. What
they really want is the capability, but provided by a terminal that is
easy to use and as maintenance-free as possible with someone else handling
the messy details of security, backups, etc. on the other end.

This split keeps flipping back and forth every few years
as technology and personnel costs change. Wait until
some "cloud" is seriously breached: I can see the adverts,
now: "It's 6PM -- do you know where your DATA is??"

On Friday, October 2, 2015 at 11:27:46 PM UTC-5, Don Y wrote:

[I wrote a driver for half-inch, 9-track tape many years ago -- the
sort of cheesy tape drives you saw in 1960's sci-fi movies?

I love old SciFi and Japanese monster movies. Because I've worked in the electrical and electronics fields, I pay attention to the "blinking lights". One of the things that always has me rolling on the floor in laughter is the fact that spinning reels for the computer tape drives are empty. There is no tape in them! ^_^

[8~{} Uncle Movie Monster

On Saturday, October 3, 2015 at 12:12:16 AM UTC-5, Uncle Monster wrote:

Political Correctness and Affirmative Action wrecked another company, eh? o_O

[8~{} Uncle Non PC Monster

....you're in way over your head. (and this is technical, not political). Know your place...nursing home, therapy, go to church service...get better.