I've seen the New Gen. Most barely know how to
program or tweak existing programs. They've
never writ a client/server app or ANY app. They
think Linux is a disease. They think Python is
an animal and 'C' is a letter of the alphabet.
Loosely(?) related:
Jonathan Blow (Thekla, Inc)
Preventing the Collapse of Civilization / https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSRHeXYDLko
Smarter Every Day 293
I Was SCARED To Say This To NASA... (But I said it anyway) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OoJsPvmFixU
On Thu, 7 Dec 2023 03:12:19 -0500
"56g.1173" <56g.1173@ztq9.net> wrote:
I've seen the New Gen. Most barely know how to
program or tweak existing programs. They've
never writ a client/server app or ANY app. They
think Linux is a disease. They think Python is
an animal and 'C' is a letter of the alphabet.
You have seen a corner - there are many real programmers still and
some very good young ones, I've found them everywhere I've worked including my CPOE. There's also a large bunch of design pattern afflicted programmers (mostly in the "Enterprise Java" world) who write the most incomprehensible code I've ever seen - but it works!
On Thu, 7 Dec 2023 03:12:19 -0500
"56g.1173" <56g.1173@ztq9.net> wrote:
I've seen the New Gen. Most barely know how to
program or tweak existing programs. They've
never writ a client/server app or ANY app. They
think Linux is a disease. They think Python is
an animal and 'C' is a letter of the alphabet.
You have seen a corner - there are many real programmers still and
some very good young ones, I've found them everywhere I've worked including my CPOE. There's also a large bunch of design pattern afflicted programmers (mostly in the "Enterprise Java" world) who write the most incomprehensible code I've ever seen - but it works!
On 2023-12-07, Ahem A Rivet's Shot <steveo@eircom.net> wrote:
On Thu, 7 Dec 2023 03:12:19 -0500
"56g.1173" <56g.1173@ztq9.net> wrote:
I've seen the New Gen. Most barely know how to
program or tweak existing programs. They've
never writ a client/server app or ANY app. They
think Linux is a disease. They think Python is
an animal and 'C' is a letter of the alphabet.
You have seen a corner - there are many real programmers still and
some very good young ones, I've found them everywhere I've worked including >> my CPOE. There's also a large bunch of design pattern afflicted programmers >> (mostly in the "Enterprise Java" world) who write the most incomprehensible >> code I've ever seen - but it works!
I work in a very small team, but I'll supply another
counterexample. There's a new guy on the team I work in. He was
hired right out of college. I think it has been less than two
years that he has been on the team. He was sharp to begin with,
but at this point his skills have sharpened to the point that if
the two of us were interviewing for the same job, I'd give him
better than even odds.
On 07/12/2023 14:43, yeti wrote:
Loosely(?) related:
Jonathan Blow (Thekla, Inc)
Preventing the Collapse of Civilization /
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSRHeXYDLko
Smarter Every Day 293
I Was SCARED To Say This To NASA... (But I said it anyway)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OoJsPvmFixU
I have renamed IT to DIT. DisInformation technology.
Ahem A Rivet's Shot <steveo@eircom.net> wrote:
On Thu, 7 Dec 2023 03:12:19 -0500
"56g.1173" <56g.1173@ztq9.net> wrote:
I've seen the New Gen. Most barely know how to
program or tweak existing programs. They've
never writ a client/server app or ANY app. They
think Linux is a disease. They think Python is
an animal and 'C' is a letter of the alphabet.
You have seen a corner - there are many real programmers still and
some very good young ones, I've found them everywhere I've worked
including my CPOE. There's also a large bunch of design pattern
afflicted programmers (mostly in the "Enterprise Java" world) who
write the most incomprehensible code I've ever seen - but it works!
I work in a very small team, but I'll supply another counterexample.
There's a new guy on the team I work in. He was hired right out of
college. I think it has been less than two years that he has been on
the team. He was sharp to begin with, but at this point his skills
have sharpened to the point that if the two of us were interviewing
for the same job, I'd give him better than even odds.
And I retired at JUST the right time .....
There are programmers/system-people who are MUCH
better than I am - the geeks who burn a gram+ of
caffeine and 2000 cals of sugar doughnuts every day.
In my time IT was mostly self-taught. You started
with PETSs/VICs/Atari's/C64s and found it all out
on your own. College-level was WAY too abstract for
most practical uses beyond mainframes at NASA.
HATED punch-cards.
On Fri, 08 Dec 2023 08:29:58 +0000
Richard Kettlewell <invalid@invalid.invalid> wrote:
Every generation has some people whinging about the younger ones,
oblivious to the fact that analogous complaints were made about their
own generation a few decades earlier. At a certain point you realize
it???s all hot air.
There are surviving complaints about the deficiencies of the youth
of today from Roman times.
Every generation has some people whinging about the younger ones,
oblivious to the fact that analogous complaints were made about their
own generation a few decades earlier. At a certain point you realize
it’s all hot air.
On Fri, 8 Dec 2023 00:41:52 -0500 "56g.1173" <56g.1173@ztq9.net> wrote:
And I retired at JUST the right time .....
Nah I'm sticking around for a few more years yet, it's still fun.
There are programmers/system-people who are MUCH better than I am -
the geeks who burn a gram+ of caffeine and 2000 cals of sugar
doughnuts every day.
That went out of fashion some time ago, when people finally
realised that you don't get more done that way. The BASIC for the
Camputers Lynx was written by someone like that 16K of Z80 Assembler and
*NO* meaningful comments. It worked but it was completely
unmaintainable.
In my time IT was mostly self-taught. You started with
PETSs/VICs/Atari's/C64s and found it all out
Sounds like your time was a little after mine, but not much.
The computer science I learned at college has stood me in good
stead ever since.
But not the whole thing.
I'm more worried about the private/corp/govt shops where nobody seems
to KNOW anything about computers or programming or much of ANYTHING
anymore beyond how to spend big $$$ with M$
or Goog or Apple for some neo metered client/server model from the
60s/70s.
ENEMIES, real enemies, are keen to - and likely now CAN - take that
shit DOWN in an instant if the poop ever hits the proverbial
propeller. Too many of the New Guys have NO contingency plans other
than to blame M$ and friends.
"Not MY fault !"
Yes, it IS your fault ... and that of the pointy- haired bosses who
hired you ...........
On Fri, 8 Dec 2023 09:09:14 +0000, Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote:
On Fri, 8 Dec 2023 00:41:52 -0500 "56g.1173" <56g.1173@ztq9.net> wrote:
And I retired at JUST the right time .....
Nah I'm sticking around for a few more years yet, it's still
fun.
There are programmers/system-people who are MUCH better than I am -
the geeks who burn a gram+ of caffeine and 2000 cals of sugar
doughnuts every day.
That went out of fashion some time ago, when people finally
realised that you don't get more done that way. The BASIC for the
Camputers Lynx was written by someone like that 16K of Z80 Assembler and *NO* meaningful comments. It worked but it was completely
unmaintainable.
In my time IT was mostly self-taught. You started with
PETSs/VICs/Atari's/C64s and found it all out
Sounds like your time was a little after mine, but not much.
Same here. Learnt Algol 60 at uni where I was using the University's only
student computer (Elliott 503 - look THAT up!), went straight into a one
of ICL's computer bureaus (ICL 1902 mainframe where I was taught
Learning Algol 60 followed by COBOL as my first programming languages
almost certainly gave me a better grounding in designing, writing and implementing systems in well-structured code than learning BASIC as my
Robert Riches <spamtrap42@jacob21819.net> writes:
Ahem A Rivet's Shot <steveo@eircom.net> wrote:
On Thu, 7 Dec 2023 03:12:19 -0500
"56g.1173" <56g.1173@ztq9.net> wrote:
I've seen the New Gen. Most barely know how to
program or tweak existing programs. They've
never writ a client/server app or ANY app. They
think Linux is a disease. They think Python is
an animal and 'C' is a letter of the alphabet.
You have seen a corner - there are many real programmers still and
some very good young ones, I've found them everywhere I've worked
including my CPOE. There's also a large bunch of design pattern
afflicted programmers (mostly in the "Enterprise Java" world) who
write the most incomprehensible code I've ever seen - but it works!
I work in a very small team, but I'll supply another counterexample.
There's a new guy on the team I work in. He was hired right out of
college. I think it has been less than two years that he has been on
the team. He was sharp to begin with, but at this point his skills
have sharpened to the point that if the two of us were interviewing
for the same job, I'd give him better than even odds.
Agreed, we’ve had some excellent graduate hires over the last couple of years. If anything it’s been harder to hire good people into the more senior roles than junior.
Every generation has some people whinging about the younger ones,
oblivious to the fact that analogous complaints were made about their
own generation a few decades earlier. At a certain point you realize
it’s all hot air.
detection and recovery and, for non-trivial applications fail to have the client build and USE adequate acceptance tests,
On 08/12/2023 08:29, Richard Kettlewell wrote:
Agreed, we’ve had some excellent graduate hires over the last couple
of years. If anything it’s been harder to hire good people into the
more senior roles than junior. Every generation has some people
whinging about the younger ones, oblivious to the fact that analogous
complaints were made about their own generation a few decades
earlier. At a certain point you realize it’s all hot air.
Not all hot air. I remember hiring you and you were absolutely
exceptional. Far too many other people simply were 'Ok-ish' and could
fiddle with Windows and eventually make it work, but had no real clue
beyond that. The problem is that in any generation there are a few exceptionals and a thousand 'ok, with the right training' . But if
they don't get the right training, they are to put it bluntly, a
fucking liability.
On Fri, 8 Dec 2023 13:19:17 -0000 (UTC)
Martin Gregorie <martin@mydomain.invalid> wrote:
detection and recovery and, for non-trivial applications fail to have
the client build and USE adequate acceptance tests,
I recall getting a lot of push back on that from an internal
customer - right up until a misunderstanding of the requirements
resulted in a production disaster - *then* they got the point and got
all enthusiastic about acceptance testing.
That was a very well run project - we designed APIs first as a
group and then one engineer went off to write tests and another to write
the implementation (the competitive aspect of this was really helpful,
you really pay attention when you know someone good is trying to break
your code). When test met code we found the places where the design was insufficiently clear.
Learnt Algol 60 at uni where I was using the University's only
student computer (Elliott 503 - look THAT up!)
The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> writes:
On 08/12/2023 08:29, Richard Kettlewell wrote:
Agreed, we’ve had some excellent graduate hires over the last couple
of years. If anything it’s been harder to hire good people into the
more senior roles than junior. Every generation has some people
whinging about the younger ones, oblivious to the fact that analogous
complaints were made about their own generation a few decades
earlier. At a certain point you realize it’s all hot air.
Not all hot air. I remember hiring you and you were absolutely
exceptional. Far too many other people simply were 'Ok-ish' and could
fiddle with Windows and eventually make it work, but had no real clue
beyond that. The problem is that in any generation there are a few
exceptionals and a thousand 'ok, with the right training' . But if
they don't get the right training, they are to put it bluntly, a
fucking liability.
Right, I don’t think the balance between the exceptional and the
adequate has substantially changed, certainly not since the 1990s and probably not since the 1590s.
Look at the annual intake of, I dunno, a Tudor-era shipyard and I’d
expect to find a handful people who take to the work like they were born
to it, and a much larger number of people who could knock together some planks with a bit of supervision and inspection.
The thing that’s hot air is the claim that there’s some kind of generational difference involved.
On 08 Dec 2023 at 13:02:43 GMT, "Martin Gregorie" <martin@mydomain.invalid> wrote:
Learnt Algol 60 at uni where I was using the University's only
student computer (Elliott 503 - look THAT up!)
The one I used was at Imperial. Where was yours?
The computer science I learned at college has stood me in good
stead ever since.
2023-12-08, Ahem A Rivet's Shot <steveo@eircom.net> schrieb:
On Fri, 08 Dec 2023 08:29:58 +0000
Richard Kettlewell <invalid@invalid.invalid> wrote:
Every generation has some people whinging about the younger ones,
oblivious to the fact that analogous complaints were made about their
own generation a few decades earlier. At a certain point you realize
it???s all hot air.
There are surviving complaints about the deficiencies of the youth
of today from Roman times.
Yes, but the Romans were probably right when complaining about the youth being bad programmers.
On Fri, 8 Dec 2023 00:49:15 -0500, 56g.1173 wrote:
But not the whole thing.
I'm more worried about the private/corp/govt shops where nobody seems
to KNOW anything about computers or programming or much of ANYTHING
anymore beyond how to spend big $$$ with M$
or Goog or Apple for some neo metered client/server model from the
60s/70s.
ENEMIES, real enemies, are keen to - and likely now CAN - take that
shit DOWN in an instant if the poop ever hits the proverbial
propeller. Too many of the New Guys have NO contingency plans other
than to blame M$ and friends.
"Not MY fault !"
Yes, it IS your fault ... and that of the pointy- haired bosses who
hired you ...........
Agreed. If you fail to adequately deal with any aspect of application
design and documentation, system architecture, performance, error
detection and recovery, software design, including adequate error
detection and recovery and, for non-trivial applications fail to have
the client build and USE adequate acceptance tests, then you and your management have failed and deserve all the grief that comes your way.
The prime example of how not to do all of the above correctly is the UK
Post Office Horizon screw-up.
I worked at that service bureau on those days, while during
the rest of the week my disenchantment with Computer Science deepened,
and I discovered that theoretical math really wasn't my forte.
At the end of my third year (a disaster aside from the programming
part), I dropped out, went on full time with the service bureau,
and have been programming real-world applications ever since.
On 08/12/2023 16:51, TimS wrote:
On 08 Dec 2023 at 13:02:43 GMT, "Martin Gregorie"
<martin@mydomain.invalid> wrote:
Learnt Algol 60 at uni where I was using the University's only
student computer (Elliott 503 - look THAT up!)
The one I used was at Imperial. Where was yours?
I think Cambridge had one.
On 08 Dec 2023 at 13:02:43 GMT, "Martin Gregorie"
<martin@mydomain.invalid>
wrote:
Learnt Algol 60 at uni where I was using the University's only student
computer (Elliott 503 - look THAT up!)
The one I used was at Imperial. Where was yours?
These were not despised as the product of 'white male science', nor
yet were they dismissed as irrelevant or socially dangerous. They were
seen as triumphs of traditional education and bloody hard work.
On 8 Dec 2023 16:51:10 GMT, TimS wrote:
On 08 Dec 2023 at 13:02:43 GMT, "Martin Gregorie"
<martin@mydomain.invalid>
wrote:
Learnt Algol 60 at uni where I was using the University's only student
computer (Elliott 503 - look THAT up!)
The one I used was at Imperial. Where was yours?
Victoria University of Wellington (NZ).
From memory ours had 32 KB main memory and another 32Kb, in a separate cabinet, that operated as fast disk store: After it was booted, all
standard executables and, IIRC the Algol standard library, were loaded
into it. Any unoccupied space in it could also be used as a sort of paged memory for holding and operating on large arrays.
It had a line printer as well as paper tape readers and punches. By the
last time I saw it, it had acquired four 1/2" inch mag tape drives,
mainly, I think, because it booted faster off mag tape and anyway, I'd imagine that would be more resistant to wear & tear than paper tape,
The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> writes:
These were not despised as the product of 'white male science', nor
yet were they dismissed as irrelevant or socially dangerous. They were
seen as triumphs of traditional education and bloody hard work.
You should spend less time paying attention to culture war nonsense.
On 09/12/2023 08:56, Richard Kettlewell wrote:
The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> writes:It is very hard not to be overwhelmed by it Richard.
These were not despised as the product of 'white male science', nor
yet were they dismissed as irrelevant or socially dangerous. They were
seen as triumphs of traditional education and bloody hard work.
You should spend less time paying attention to culture war nonsense.
When every single part of your life is affected by it.
Frankly I feel your comment feels like saying to a 1930s German Jew 'you should pay less attention to that national socialist nonsense'.
On 09 Dec 2023 at 09:59:37 GMT, "The Natural Philosopher" <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
On 09/12/2023 08:56, Richard Kettlewell wrote:
The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> writes:It is very hard not to be overwhelmed by it Richard.
These were not despised as the product of 'white male science', nor
yet were they dismissed as irrelevant or socially dangerous. They were >>>> seen as triumphs of traditional education and bloody hard work.
You should spend less time paying attention to culture war nonsense.
When every single part of your life is affected by it.
Frankly I feel your comment feels like saying to a 1930s German Jew 'you
should pay less attention to that national socialist nonsense'.
Or those Israeli women near the Gaza border on 7th Oct whom Hamas "fighters" raped, murdered and mutilated (not necessarily in that order). Perhaps they should have paid less attention to culture war nonsense.
See, it's like the naive ones of the 60s. Remember them? And how they said that peace would prevail and there wouldn't be another war "because we won't turn up". The jews of the 1930s didn't "turn up", nor did those women.
You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you.
Luxury. We had perhaps 8k of store and the only I/O device was a paper
tape read/punch. The machine was in fact an 803 (I misread your OP) and
so slow that it couldn't drive the reader at full speed. And it only had autocode - no Algol.
On 9 Dec 2023 08:53:19 GMT, TimS wrote:
Luxury. We had perhaps 8k of store and the only I/O device was a paperThe Elliott 503 preceeded the 803: I've seen 803s in NMOC but never seen
tape read/punch. The machine was in fact an 803 (I misread your OP) and
so slow that it couldn't drive the reader at full speed. And it only had
autocode - no Algol.
one running.
The 503 was physically huge, being four cabinets, each about the same size
as a two-door wardrobe, an engineers monitoring panel which was about 4
feet by 3 feet, a lineprinter, two paper tape readers, two paper tape
punches and a control console. The latter was a small desk with keyboard
and teletype-style printer inset flush with the desktop. IIRC had two
It used 39 bit ferrite core memory and needed those big cabinets because
the logic was built from discrete transistors, so the 503 must have been
one of the first transistorised computers.
I've always said that this will be the epitaph of our society (spoken in
a nasal whine, of course).
The prime example of how not to do all of the above correctly is the UK
Post Office Horizon screw-up.
Is that anything like the Canadian Phoenix federal payroll screw-up?
Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but
when there is nothing left to take away.
-- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
So building a 'puter out of DTL or RTL using discrete semiconductors was utterly feasible in the the late 1950s. Slow, extremely bulky and pretty power hungry, but feasible.
"In January of 1954, supported by the military, engineers from Bell Labs built the first computer without vacuum tubes. Known as TRADIC (for TRAnsistorized DIgital Computer), the machine was a mere three cubic
feet, a mind-boggling size when compared with the 1000 square feet ENIAC hogged. It contained almost 800 point-contact transistors and 10,000 germanium crystal rectifiers. It could perform a million logical
operations every second, still not quite as fast as the vacuum tube
computers of the day, but pretty close. And best of all, it operated on
less than 100 watts of power. ¨
On Fri, 08 Dec 2023 19:16:38 GMT, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
I've always said that this will be the epitaph of our society (spoken in
a nasal whine, of course).
I don't know about that one, but for sheer venality, bad management, incompetence, (seeming lack of) and purely incompetent system design and development and swindling the users this easily takes the biscuit.The prime example of how not to do all of the above correctly is the UK
Post Office Horizon screw-up.
Is that anything like the Canadian Phoenix federal payroll screw-up?
Private Eye published a good description of the scandal:
https://www.private-eye.co.uk/special-reports/justice-lost-in-the-post
and BBC's Radio 4 also has an excellent series on it, but the scandal
(which would seem to involve management and staff at all levels in the UK Post Offoce and Fujitsu isn't done and dusted yet.
Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, butIndeed: another interesting example of cockup by carelessness turns out to
when there is nothing left to take away.
-- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
be the recent delivery of samples from the Bennu:
https://arstechnica.com/space/2023/12/nasas-asteroid-mission-struck-its- target-but-then-dodged-a-bullet/2/
project in Wellington where the hospital's Heart Unit used them to record patient notes: the page were designed by hospital staff, who apparently preferred then to hand-written notes.
On 9 Dec 2023 08:53:19 GMT, TimS wrote:
Luxury. We had perhaps 8k of store and the only I/O device was a paperThe Elliott 503 preceeded the 803: I've seen 803s in NMOC but never seen
tape read/punch. The machine was in fact an 803 (I misread your OP) and
so slow that it couldn't drive the reader at full speed. And it only had
autocode - no Algol.
one running.
On Sat, 9 Dec 2023 13:46:04 -0000 (UTC)
Martin Gregorie <martin@mydomain.invalid> wrote:
project in Wellington where the hospital's Heart Unit used them to record
patient notes: the page were designed by hospital staff, who apparently
preferred then to hand-written notes.
Have you ever tried to read a doctor's handwriting ?
On Fri, 8 Dec 2023 00:49:15 -0500, 56g.1173 wrote:
But not the whole thing.
I'm more worried about the private/corp/govt shops where nobody seems
to KNOW anything about computers or programming or much of ANYTHING
anymore beyond how to spend big $$$ with M$
or Goog or Apple for some neo metered client/server model from the
60s/70s.
ENEMIES, real enemies, are keen to - and likely now CAN - take that
shit DOWN in an instant if the poop ever hits the proverbial
propeller. Too many of the New Guys have NO contingency plans other
than to blame M$ and friends.
"Not MY fault !"
Yes, it IS your fault ... and that of the pointy- haired bosses who
hired you ...........
Agreed. If you fail to adequately deal with any aspect of application
design and documentation, system architecture, performance, error
detection and recovery, software design, including adequate error
detection and recovery and, for non-trivial applications fail to have the client build and USE adequate acceptance tests, then you and your
management have failed and deserve all the grief that comes your way.
The prime example of how not to do all of the above correctly is the UK
Post Office Horizon screw-up.
On 09 Dec 2023 at 09:59:37 GMT, "The Natural Philosopher" <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
On 09/12/2023 08:56, Richard Kettlewell wrote:
The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> writes:It is very hard not to be overwhelmed by it Richard.
These were not despised as the product of 'white male science', nor
yet were they dismissed as irrelevant or socially dangerous. They were >>>> seen as triumphs of traditional education and bloody hard work.
You should spend less time paying attention to culture war nonsense.
When every single part of your life is affected by it.
Frankly I feel your comment feels like saying to a 1930s German Jew 'you
should pay less attention to that national socialist nonsense'.
Or those Israeli women near the Gaza border on 7th Oct whom Hamas "fighters" raped, murdered and mutilated (not necessarily in that order). Perhaps they should have paid less attention to culture war nonsense.
See, it's like the naive ones of the 60s. Remember them? And how they said that peace would prevail and there wouldn't be another war "because we won't turn up". The jews of the 1930s didn't "turn up", nor did those women.
You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you.
56g.1173 wrote:
Until it penetrates my pension/SS stuff. THEN it's
gonna be bad. Oh well, that's what LAWYERS are
for ... sue the fuckers for ten times the damages ....
We all live in the movie IDIOCRACY - It is not the future, it is the now.
On 09 Dec 2023 at 12:39:16 GMT, "Martin Gregorie"
<martin@mydomain.invalid> wrote:
On 9 Dec 2023 08:53:19 GMT, TimS wrote:Back to front; the 803 came first (1960 or so), then the 503 in 1963.
Luxury. We had perhaps 8k of store and the only I/O device was a paperThe Elliott 503 preceeded the 803: I've seen 803s in NMOC but never
tape read/punch. The machine was in fact an 803 (I misread your OP)
and so slow that it couldn't drive the reader at full speed. And it
only had autocode - no Algol.
seen one running.
The 803 was bit-serial, so the cycle time was around 2msec [1]. The 503
was much faster.
[1] That's 500Hz.
On Sat, 9 Dec 2023 13:46:04 -0000 (UTC)
Martin Gregorie <martin@mydomain.invalid> wrote:
project in Wellington where the hospital's Heart Unit used them to
record patient notes: the page were designed by hospital staff, who
apparently preferred then to hand-written notes.
Have you ever tried to read a doctor's handwriting ?
On 9 Dec 2023 14:20:14 GMT, TimS wrote:
On 09 Dec 2023 at 12:39:16 GMT, "Martin Gregorie"
<martin@mydomain.invalid> wrote:
On 9 Dec 2023 08:53:19 GMT, TimS wrote:Back to front; the 803 came first (1960 or so), then the 503 in 1963.
Luxury. We had perhaps 8k of store and the only I/O device was a paper >>>> tape read/punch. The machine was in fact an 803 (I misread your OP)The Elliott 503 preceeded the 803: I've seen 803s in NMOC but never
and so slow that it couldn't drive the reader at full speed. And it
only had autocode - no Algol.
seen one running.
The 803 was bit-serial, so the cycle time was around 2msec [1]. The 503
was much faster.
[1] That's 500Hz.
Fair enough: I hadn't seen an 803 until I first visited the NMOC , so
around 35 years after I last saw VUW's 503. The last time I was at the
NMOC there wasn't lot of technical info on the 803 or an Elliott timeline and as I haven't seen one run.
I have heard that the 803 instruction set is identical to the 503: is this true?
There's supposed to be a TV special (docudrama?) about it on soon.
Buggered if I can find it though.
OK! "Mr Bates vs. The Post Office" to be aired on ITV, starting 9pm New Year's Day https://www.itv.com/presscentre/media-packs/mr-bates-vs-post-office https://virginradio.co.uk/entertainment/128839/mr-bates-vs-the-post-office-release-date-cast-plot-details
On 10 Dec 2023 at 16:04:59 GMT, "Martin Gregorie"
<martin@mydomain.invalid>
wrote:
On 9 Dec 2023 14:20:14 GMT, TimS wrote:
On 09 Dec 2023 at 12:39:16 GMT, "Martin Gregorie"
<martin@mydomain.invalid> wrote:
On 9 Dec 2023 08:53:19 GMT, TimS wrote:Back to front; the 803 came first (1960 or so), then the 503 in 1963.
Luxury. We had perhaps 8k of store and the only I/O device was aThe Elliott 503 preceeded the 803: I've seen 803s in NMOC but never
paper tape read/punch. The machine was in fact an 803 (I misread
your OP) and so slow that it couldn't drive the reader at full
speed. And it only had autocode - no Algol.
seen one running.
The 803 was bit-serial, so the cycle time was around 2msec [1]. The
503 was much faster.
[1] That's 500Hz.
Fair enough: I hadn't seen an 803 until I first visited the NMOC , so
around 35 years after I last saw VUW's 503. The last time I was at the
NMOC there wasn't lot of technical info on the 803 or an Elliott
timeline and as I haven't seen one run.
I have heard that the 803 instruction set is identical to the 503: is
this true?
According to Wikipedia, that is the case.
On Sat, 9 Dec 2023 14:07:10 +0000, Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote:
On Sat, 9 Dec 2023 13:46:04 -0000 (UTC)
Martin Gregorie <martin@mydomain.invalid> wrote:
project in Wellington where the hospital's Heart Unit used them to
record patient notes: the page were designed by hospital staff, who
apparently preferred then to hand-written notes.
Have you ever tried to read a doctor's handwriting ?
Fair comment, but maybe I wasn't clear enough in my description:
The Optical Mark Reader couldn't recognise script: input was on sheets of
On 12/9/23 5:14 AM, TimS wrote:
See, it's like the naive ones of the 60s. Remember them? And how they said >> that peace would prevail and there wouldn't be another war "because we won't >> turn up". The jews of the 1930s didn't "turn up", nor did those women.
"This is the dawning of the Age Of Aquarius" :-)
Anyway, 'normal' soon comes to DELUDE. As the old Zappa
song went, 'It can't happen here ...". This is when both
individuals and institutions get CARELESS - think "normal"
is some kind of natural law.
And then .....
"Civilization" and its fruits are far more fragile than people
want to believe. The more complex a 'system' the more rapid and
severe its fall. 1st-world is 1st-world because everything is so
interconnected and smooth ... but that can CHANGE.
On Sun, 10 Dec 2023 09:29:30 +0100
Deloptes <deloptes@gmail.com> wrote:
56g.1173 wrote:
Until it penetrates my pension/SS stuff. THEN it's
gonna be bad. Oh well, that's what LAWYERS are
for ... sue the fuckers for ten times the damages ....
We all live in the movie IDIOCRACY - It is not the future, it is the now.
My two favourite thoughts about the future:
"The future is here, just unevenly distributed"
"The future was never like this"
On Sun, 10 Dec 2023 16:52:41 -0000 (UTC)
Martin Gregorie <martin@mydomain.invalid> wrote:
On Sat, 9 Dec 2023 14:07:10 +0000, Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote:
On Sat, 9 Dec 2023 13:46:04 -0000 (UTC)
Martin Gregorie <martin@mydomain.invalid> wrote:
project in Wellington where the hospital's Heart Unit used them to
record patient notes: the page were designed by hospital staff, who
apparently preferred then to hand-written notes.
Have you ever tried to read a doctor's handwriting ?
Fair comment, but maybe I wasn't clear enough in my description:
The Optical Mark Reader couldn't recognise script: input was on sheets of
Oh I know - we had a lot of multiple guess exam papers marked by
those things when I was at school.
On Sun, 10 Dec 2023 16:52:41 -0000 (UTC)
Martin Gregorie <martin@mydomain.invalid> wrote:
On Sat, 9 Dec 2023 14:07:10 +0000, Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote:
On Sat, 9 Dec 2023 13:46:04 -0000 (UTC)
Martin Gregorie <martin@mydomain.invalid> wrote:
project in Wellington where the hospital's Heart Unit used them to
record patient notes: the page were designed by hospital staff, who
apparently preferred then to hand-written notes.
Have you ever tried to read a doctor's handwriting ?
Fair comment, but maybe I wasn't clear enough in my description:
The Optical Mark Reader couldn't recognise script: input was on sheets
of
Oh I know - we had a lot of multiple guess exam papers marked by
those things when I was at school.
On 2023-12-10, 56g.1173 <56g.1173@ztq9.net> wrote:
On 12/9/23 5:14 AM, TimS wrote:
See, it's like the naive ones of the 60s. Remember them? And how they said >>> that peace would prevail and there wouldn't be another war "because we won't
turn up". The jews of the 1930s didn't "turn up", nor did those women.
"This is the dawning of the Age Of Aquarius" :-)
It's time for a 21st-century re-write:
This is the dawning of the age of the psychopath
Age of the psychopaaaaaaath....
Anyway, 'normal' soon comes to DELUDE. As the old Zappa
song went, 'It can't happen here ...". This is when both
individuals and institutions get CARELESS - think "normal"
is some kind of natural law.
And then .....
Speaking of songs, there's that one by Bruce Cockburn:
The trouble with normal is it always gets worse.
"Civilization" and its fruits are far more fragile than people
want to believe. The more complex a 'system' the more rapid and
severe its fall. 1st-world is 1st-world because everything is so
interconnected and smooth ... but that can CHANGE.
And people just love complexity. Remember, complexity is a weapon.
The KISS principle is a countermeasure, but KISS advocates are
loudly shouted down at every opportunity.
On 2023-12-10, Ahem A Rivet's Shot <steveo@eircom.net> wrote:
On Sun, 10 Dec 2023 09:29:30 +0100
Deloptes <deloptes@gmail.com> wrote:
56g.1173 wrote:My two favourite thoughts about the future:
Until it penetrates my pension/SS stuff. THEN it's
gonna be bad. Oh well, that's what LAWYERS are
for ... sue the fuckers for ten times the damages ....
We all live in the movie IDIOCRACY - It is not the future, it is the now. >>
"The future is here, just unevenly distributed"
"The future was never like this"
The future isn't what it used to be.
On 08/12/2023 19:16, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
I worked at that service bureau on those days, while during
the rest of the week my disenchantment with Computer Science deepened,
and I discovered that theoretical math really wasn't my forte.
At the end of my third year (a disaster aside from the programming
part), I dropped out, went on full time with the service bureau,
and have been programming real-world applications ever since.
Yes. Computer science is relatively speaking bollocks. Software
engineering however is extremely valuable
On 12/10/23 2:18 PM, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
On 2023-12-10, 56g.1173 <56g.1173@ztq9.net> wrote:
On 12/9/23 5:14 AM, TimS wrote:
See, it's like the naive ones of the 60s. Remember them? And how
they said that peace would prevail and there wouldn't be another
war "because we won't turn up". The jews of the 1930s didn't
"turn up", nor did those women.
"This is the dawning of the Age Of Aquarius" :-)
It's time for a 21st-century re-write:
This is the dawning of the age of the psychopath
Age of the psychopaaaaaaath....
Heh, heh .... yea ... more true than you know ! :-)
Looking, I keep being reminded of the early 20th
century. Loons and anarchists and fanatics galore.
Everyone was eager to roll the dice in hopes of
coming out better. The TOLL however .......
Anyway, 'normal' soon comes to DELUDE. As the old Zappa
song went, 'It can't happen here ...". This is when both
individuals and institutions get CARELESS - think "normal"
is some kind of natural law.
And then .....
Speaking of songs, there's that one by Bruce Cockburn:
The trouble with normal is it always gets worse.
Glad somebody noticed that ....
"Civilization" and its fruits are far more fragile than people
want to believe. The more complex a 'system' the more rapid and
severe its fall. 1st-world is 1st-world because everything is so
interconnected and smooth ... but that can CHANGE.
And people just love complexity. Remember, complexity is a weapon.
The KISS principle is a countermeasure, but KISS advocates are
loudly shouted down at every opportunity.
Yep. They RUIN it for so many others.
There is political/economic POWER in that Gordian
knot of "complexity". It can hide SO many things.
Ok, "The World" IS very very complex these days. Not just
a small handful of mega-powers. Political, military,
economic power and the web of INTERACTIONS/LINKS make
things VERY complicated. Maybe TOO complicated.
Any who DON'T have that ... they're goin' DOWN ...
dark-ages down. Dung huts and plagues and tyrant
kings down .....
Not entirely sure what this has to do with rPI's though ...
however they may be the highest level of computing power
left after a Fall.
On Thu Dec 7 03:12:00 2023, 56g.1173 wrote to All <=-
I've seen the New Gen. Most barely know how to
program or tweak existing programs. They've
never writ a client/server app or ANY app. They
think Linux is a disease. They think Python is
an animal and 'C' is a letter of the alphabet.
They are "expert" at using M$/Apple/Goog commercial
apps. That's about it. WHEN it all goes to hell they
will NOT have a backup plan - just to blame M$ or
whatever to keep their jobs.
M$/Apple/Good commercial apps actually DO a lot.
They are also Huge Targets for enemy hacks because
of that. A layered security/backup scheme is the
only way to survive. "Cloud" - not nearly as
secure/robust as they think. They WILL put
EVERYTHING there - and LOSE it.
We who deal with programming, systems-level stuff,
we KNOW. The new gen, and the pointy-haired bosses
who believe in whatever "Modern Management Mag"
says, are SO seriously deluded. "Appearances" are
all that counts. Alas, by deflecting blame, they'll
likely survive - apparently that's the Alpha/Omega.
I spent over 40 years finding out How Things
Really Work and putting that to best advantage
for "The Cause". From Assembler/DOS/Win/Linux
to the latest stuff, I just *had* to know what
made it tick. What was great, what was crap, what
was Armageddon.
Do I sound bitter ? Well, that's not really the
right mindset ... it's more "despondent", seeing
how far standards have fallen and where it leads.
Oh well, I'll get my pension and SS checks - might
even make more money than before - but now whatever
happens isn't MY fault anymore. I can do the
blame-displacement game too - and with solid creds.
Until it penetrates my pension/SS stuff. THEN it's
gonna be bad. Oh well, that's what LAWYERS are
for ... sue the fuckers for ten times the damages ....
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
Jeez, and you wonder WHY people are reluctant to join IT? Old-timers like yo
Jeez, and you wonder WHY people are reluctant to join IT? Old-timers like you act like gatekeepers, saying there's only "one true way" to do things. If you're not writing your own firewall in assembly, you're not a*real* IT person!
Gatekeeping behaviour is something that tends to run deep in engineering and computing careers, especially among white men for some reason. Anyone doing things differently, or learning in a faster way, or progressing faster than they did is somehow an impostor. "If I had to suffer through X, Y, and Z, then
so should you!" implying that their skills are somehow weaker or less valuable
because they were obtained differently.
I know a LOT of young people in IT and they do a fucking outstanding job. MaybeI know a lot of completely trashy crap software., especially in the
if you actually looked around and took your blinders off, you'd be able to see
that.
On 12/12/2023 11:08, A.M. Rowsell wrote:
Jeez, and you wonder WHY people are reluctant to join IT? Old-timersLOL!
like you act like gatekeepers, saying there's only "one true way" to do
things. If you're not writing your own firewall in assembly, you're not
a*real* IT person!
Gatekeeping behaviour is something that tends to run deep inI think you are over egging the pudding
engineering and computing careers, especially among white men for some
reason. Anyone doing things differently, or learning in a faster way,
or progressing faster than they did is somehow an impostor. "If I had
to suffer through X, Y, and Z, then so should you!" implying that their
skills are somehow weaker or less valuable because they were obtained
differently.
I know a LOT of young people in IT and they do a fucking outstandingI know a lot of completely trashy crap software., especially in the
job. Maybe if you actually looked around and took your blinders off,
you'd be able to see that.
[b]anking sector that is truly execrable.
It wasn't written by senile old white men.
Re: New-Gen "IT" People ... T
By: A.M. Rowsell to 56g.1173 on Wed Dec 13 2023 12:08 am
Jeez, and you wonder WHY people are reluctant to join IT? Old-timers like yo
If anything, people is eager to join IT because they hear of the high wages. Then you end with offices full of people doing IT who actually hate doing IT.
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