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CodeWraith wrote: Try machine code. The style guide/syntax rules contain only one word: hexadecinmal binary.
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
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Already in 1978 I allowed myself the luxury of a hex keypad and 7 segment LED displays instead of toggle switches and eight simple LEDs.
I have lived with several Zen masters - all of them were cats.
His last invention was an evil Lasagna. It didn't kill anyone, and it actually tasted pretty good.
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Wimp!
Real programmers coded with the front panel switches! 
And uber-programmers coded with a compass and a small bar magnet...
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
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Take a look at a PDP-11/34 or a Heathkit / Zenith H-8 front panel.
The H-8 documentation included an 8-1/2 x 11 Programmer's Reference Card with the octal version of the 8080 instruction set, as I recall, which got used to hand-assemble a few simple programs!
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Reminds me of booting the old PDP/11-70
Toggle all switches down.
Toggle up the 770 (Octal... Because Hexadecimal was just WAY OUT THERE)
Hit load
Toggle up the LUN (I believe was next)
Hit run.
You literally needed a manual to know how to boot from tape vs. disk.
Making a bootable tape was akin to magic. (Most bootable tapes came from DEC).
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Heh, I guess I was styling back then. I'd purchased a 16 line by 64 character display card for my S100 bus system (only card I hadn't put together myself). Connected it to an old TV. I actually can't remember how the keyboard connected to the system but the only I/O I had at the time was an RS232 interface board I'd wire wrapped so I guess that how it had to be. Even though I had a preemo display and keyboard I was still programming by the numbers.
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Very typical combination at that time. A character based graphics board + TV/Monitor + keyboard = serial terminal. I had one of those as well, but only the keyboard and the monitor have survived and still work.
I have lived with several Zen masters - all of them were cats.
His last invention was an evil Lasagna. It didn't kill anyone, and it actually tasted pretty good.
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Wirewrap! We didn't have no stinkin wirewrap! We had a solder gun, 18 ga wire and we liked it.
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Heh, at least it was a manual wire wrap tool, no electricity involved!
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done that! no fancy spaces needed! 
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You don't remember COBOL? It had positional stuff too. Didn't it? That was one class a LONG time ago.
Also remember WHY it's called Python. Some of their stuff was extremely silly.
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Sort of: it was intended for punch cards, so in the early days specific columns had specific meanings. This explains it well: fortran - Why does COBOL have to be indented? - Stack Overflow[^]
FORTRAN had similar: Column 1 indicated a comment if it held a C or a *, columns 1-5 were labels, 6 allowed a line to continue from the previous one. But ... it removed all whitespace outside strings before compilation. And since it didn't require variable declaration (the type of a variable depended on the first letter in its name):
DO 100 i = 1, 10 Was VERY different from
DO 100 X = 1. 10
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
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I have a lot of horrible memories of large FORTRAN projects. Thankfully, none were in this century so the memories are a bit faded now but not gone entirely.
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FORTRAN only had one real rule: statements start in column seven
The early stuff, and a couple on the end, were for statement numbers and comment marks and things like that. But really, only one column location - so just line-em-up.
| Ravings en masse^ |
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| "The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein | | "If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you are seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010 |
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Except for labels - and you needed them for every flow-of-control statement: DO, GOTO, IF, ...
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
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OriginalGriff wrote: Except for labels
Yeah - that's what I meant by statement numbers, but that's quite the wrong term.
Brings back memories - I could code FORTRAN faster than I could do Lotus 1-2-3 .
So long ago. Dark Hair. 11/2" taller. Mrs. Wife looking hot enough to stop traffic . . . sigh.
| Ravings en masse^ |
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| "The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein | | "If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you are seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010 |
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Likewise: but mine was even worse, because it used a preprocessor (it was the source for the preprocessor) to provide a "structured programming" approach to FORTRAN called ROOTS[^] - I worked for Rob for six months back in the day as part of my university industrial training.
And I still use the flowcharting methods for software design ...
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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OriginalGriff wrote: And I still use the flowcharting methods for software design ...
I remember always seeing that stuff. Somehow, it never seemed to catch on with me - just make it up as I go along*.
*An invisible map in my head, I suppose.
| Ravings en masse^ |
|---|
| "The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein | | "If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you are seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010 |
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Darn - just when those memories had nearly vanished, I saw that stuff and it brought back a flood of nastiness. 
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FORTRAN and COBOL, I can forgive. They were beginning to shape the programming world. Python on the other hand I can not forgive. This is the information age, it supposes to shake off those silliness.
Admittedly no language is perfect. But when I look at some languages I had to scratch me head in disbelieve "What the heck?" Those times it always bring back memory of past Minnesota Governor Jesse Vantura's comments about St. Paul road system "They must've been designed by drunken Irish."
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OriginalGriff wrote: Sort of: it was intended for punch cards, so in the early days specific columns had specific meanings.
I can't believe you mentioned this! You set my therapy back decades! 
Funny story: my freshman year of college we submitted programs on punchcards. During the first class of the first course, we were warned to buy a wide marker. Type your deck, line the cards up neatly, then draw a diagonal stripe across the top of the deck. If the deck got out of order the stripe could be used to visually fix the order of the deck. Also use at least 2 rubber bands to hold the deck together, in case one broke.
If we had to make significant revisions to the program, the top could get messy with multiple stripes, but the manual labor of producing a deck made us better, more careful programmers. That and having 12 hour turnaround times on program runs near the end of the semester -- we could not afford to be sloppy at all. [It also made us accurate typists -- miss a stroke, throw out that card]
It's end of the semester and nearing midnight. I had dropped off my deck at noon and had walked across campus to pick up the deck + printout. My run had been successful so I got to sleep! 
Guy is walking towards me, carrying a deck of at least 300 cards. He drops the deck, the single rubber band breaks, and cards spray every where. No sign of a stripe on the top of the deck.
Poor guy looks like he's going to cry. He starts to get down on his knees to pick up the deck, straightens up, shakes his head, and walks away ...
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You have a twisted sense of humor.
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Greg Topham wrote: You have a twisted sense of humor.
At the time I was totally surprised. Maybe shocked.
In later thinking about it -- the guy was an upper classman, based upon personal appearance and the size of the deck (higher level class, longer programs). Everyone was warned to take the aforementioned care of the decks, and the displays for rubber bands and felt-tipped wide markers were right next to the punch cards in the campus store. Freshman knew enough to take care ... upper classmen should know even better.
It was a good warning for others.[^]
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"Modern" Fortran is a bit better with so-called free-format coding. Intel Fortran even offers Visual Fortran that integrates into Visual Studio. Maybe other compiler makers do something similar. It's not as painful as it once was. Thankfully.
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Yeah but a programming language that makes you say 'Neeh' ? 
modified 9-May-18 11:29am.
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