ANNOUNCEMENT UPDATE: New Server Coming

[Ghost of Autumn]

Circa 1985 I had a job as a software dev at a shop known for being frugal. It was my first job out of college so the low-ish salary didn't bother me, it was more than I ever made before.

On their last project they put hard disks into the developer's computers but at the end of the project everyone realized the product would need a hard disk instead of the intended floppy disk, because the software was taking advantage of the hard disk's speed and size. That meant the product itself was a lot more costly than intended, so lower profits for the company. Management was pissed.

The solution? Don't give the developers hard disks, make them use floppies during development.

Of course that was a HUGE hit to productivity because the floppies were so slow and had such little capacity. Every time I made a code change I had to manually change floppies twice since the dev tools and the run time were too big to fit onto one floppy.

And I personally found the other pitfall, the one you mention: Since the floppy head contacts the floppy, they wear out really fast, especially if you're overwriting data time and time again, instead of just using the floppy to boot the machine.

I found out when the disk WITH MY SOURCE CODE wore out. The operating system (DOS) could no longer find my source files. And of course there was no online backups. I had lost about a week's work.

I had heard about this software called Norton Utilities so I went to the software store (yes we had them back then) and bought a copy. It was able to recover almost all everything.

And, a few days later, all the developers had hard disks!

In 92' my dad's friend was an older tech guy who saved our first computer (more than one) using some Norton floppies.

My 8 yr old self thought he was a wizard. Big beard and drank magic potion (turned out to be cherry brandy).

 

[Bill Lee]

In 92' my dad's friend was an older tech guy who saved our first computer (more than one) using some Norton floppies.

My 8 yr old self thought he was a wizard. Big beard and drank magic potion (turned out to be cherry brandy).

The early DOS days were quite a strange time, with so many people getting computers who had no real understanding of what they were or how they worked or what to do with them, never mind what to do when something went wrong.

We all knew so many people whose response to problems with their computer was to re-install the OS from floppy, which meant re-formatting the entire hard drive, at least for the earlier DOS releases.

I think maybe it was late DOS or early Windows that had a recovery mode?

Norton Utilities were a god-send, as was Peter Norton's famous "pink shirt" book:



As it says, it was intended for programmers, and for some of us, it became our Bible. It really was the only way to learn how DOS worked and how to make it do what you wanted it to do. I found it while on that first job, then what I learned from it got me my second job where we started developing a project on a computer running UNIX but eventually transitioned the code to run on DOS. Those two core skill sets led to another 30+ years of work as a software developer.

One of the benefits of starting in that era was a "bare metal" understanding of how operating systems worked. A disadvantage is a distrust of the various "frameworks" that are the basis of much of the current software development world. It's hard to develop while poking away at layer upon layer of goo, when you're used to being able to do things the "bare metal" way. It's no longer that much of a problem now that I'm retired, but I still do a bunch of software development/integration work for a hobby, just because I find it enjoyable.

As for Norton, of course he got rich, and from an article I once read, he soon disconnected from the day-to-day tech work. IIRC he got himself a nice big house on Martha's Vineyard and rebuilt it, and is a true philanthropist. At least he didn't turn into a psycho like John McAfee...

 

[Ghost of Autumn]

The early DOS days were quite a strange time, with so many people getting computers who had no real understanding of what they were or how they worked or what to do with them, never mind what to do when something went wrong.

We all knew so many people whose response to problems with their computer was to re-install the OS from floppy, which meant re-formatting the entire hard drive, at least for the earlier DOS releases.

I think maybe it was late DOS or early Windows that had a recovery mode?

Norton Utilities were a god-send, as was Peter Norton's famous "pink shirt" book:



As it says, it was intended for programmers, and for some of us, it became our Bible. It really was the only way to learn how DOS worked and how to make it do what you wanted it to do. I found it while on that first job, then what I learned from it got me my second job where we started developing a project on a computer running UNIX but eventually transitioned the code to run on DOS. Those two core skill sets led to another 30+ years of work as a software developer.

One of the benefits of starting in that era was a "bare metal" understanding of how operating systems worked. A disadvantage is a distrust of the various "frameworks" that are the basis of much of the current software development world. It's hard to develop while poking away at layer upon layer of goo, when you're used to being able to do things the "bare metal" way. It's no longer that much of a problem now that I'm retired, but I still do a bunch of software development/integration work for a hobby, just because I find it enjoyable.

As for Norton, of course he got rich, and from an article I once read, he soon disconnected from the day-to-day tech work. IIRC he got himself a nice big house on Martha's Vineyard and rebuilt it, and is a true philanthropist. At least he didn't turn into a psycho like John McAfee...

"Technicolor rainbow!" I remember that "pink shirt" book being referenced in the super-realistic movie called 'hackers' (one of my top 10 favorite movies).

My go-to book was this one I think, or something similar.

I've been primary c# ever since, but also Python when needed. We're definitely spoiled nowadays. If I had to do something like dynamic memory allocation... Yuck.

 

[PancakeBlockPaul]

Hmmm managed box vs vps vs on prem…the choices…I know what I’d go with, then again I use to work with winnt and netware which may splain the on prem devices I have…

 

[n1997y]

…
One of the benefits of starting in that era was a "bare metal" understanding of how operating systems worked. A disadvantage is a distrust of the various "frameworks" that are the basis of much of the current software development world. It's hard to develop while poking away at layer upon layer of goo, when you're used to being able to do things the "bare metal" way. It's no longer that much of a problem now that I'm retired, but I still do a bunch of software development/integration work for a hobby, just because I find it enjoyable.

Yep. For a while I earned my living writing os kernel code. After that it was really hard to treat any of the middleware or application libraries as a black box and trust it to do what I wanted, probably because it seldom did what I expected in all cases.

But it did lead to decades of gainful employment.

As for Norton, of course he got rich, and from an article I once read, he soon disconnected from the day-to-day tech work. IIRC he got himself a nice big house on Martha's Vineyard and rebuilt it, and is a true philanthropist. At least he didn't turn into a psycho like John McAfee...

Is JMKAG our new poll option?

 

[VJCPatriot]

Thanks to all the donators who made this happen.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Years everyone!

This is great news for this forum and website going forward.

 

[Bill Lee]

"Technicolor rainbow!" I remember that "pink shirt" book being referenced in the super-realistic movie called 'hackers' (one of my top 10 favorite movies).

My go-to book was this one I think, or something similar.

I've been primary c# ever since, but also Python when needed. We're definitely spoiled nowadays. If I had to do something like dynamic memory allocation... Yuck.

A photo of books that mattered to me in the late 80's / early 90's, laid out on my attic floor:

Yep. For a while I earned my living writing os kernel code. After that it was really hard to treat any of the middleware or application libraries as a black box and trust it to do what I wanted, probably because it seldom did what I expected in all cases.

But it did lead to decades of gainful employment.

Most of my career was kernel or system level stuff. All the books above were foundational to the early part of my career in UNIX, once I had moved on from coding for DOS. Anything you did on DOS was in "real mode" so any memory screw up would lock up the machine. In that sense it was very similar to coding for the kernel.

In the circles I ran you could ask for any of them by the name of the author. You could walk into a cube and ask, "Do you have the Bach book", and it'd be handed to you. This is what we did before "stack overflow" existed.

Is JMKAG our new poll option?

Both can have a fiery afterlife, as far as I'm concerned.

 

[Ian]

Quick update: Going to try and target Monday for this. I'll follow up, but I've been slowly migrating everything over, and I'm hoping things should be in place where this should be relatively smooth and will just require repointing things. So we'll see how it goes, but that's the plan as of right now.

 

[Ghost of Autumn]

Quick update: Going to try and target Monday for this. I'll follow up, but I've been slowly migrating everything over, and I'm hoping things should be in place where this should be relatively smooth and will just require repointing things. So we'll see how it goes, but that's the plan as of right now.

Good luck!

 

[jimnance]

No idea what any of y'all are talking about but Thanks Ian !

 

[Ghost of Autumn]

In the circles I ran you could ask for any of them by the name of the author. You could walk into a cube and ask, "Do you have the Bach book", and it'd be handed to you. This is what we did before "stack overflow" existed.

I was jealous of the mini libraries that the other engineers had within their cubicle. Made them look smaht.

I think stackover existed when I first started, but I still had my c# book, a PostgreSQL book, and a bunch of StarCraft figurines.

 

[h0c2000]

Quick update: Going to try and target Monday for this. I'll follow up, but I've been slowly migrating everything over, and I'm hoping things should be in place where this should be relatively smooth and will just require repointing things. So we'll see how it goes, but that's the plan as of right now.

I suggest 1pm Saturday the 28th. Should be quiet around here.

 

[WhatJustHappened]

Finally jumped in to help Ian, sorry for being such a slacker
Good luck.

G

 

[Wax Frog]

lol, I had a Commodore Vic 20 & later 64 back in the day with a cassette tape drive and I was excited to be that high tech. The floppy drive - when my parents eventually got me that - made me feel like a king.

The Datasette! I had one (and still have my scary-good memory; useless info! ). I also remember hungrily devouring the user manual when I got my first floppy drive. I still miss my C64. I think I killed it with John Madden Football. I also thought it was really cool that I could hook up an electric typewriter for use as a printer.

 

[Wax Frog]

No idea what any of y'all are talking about but Thanks Ian !

I feel like a Portuguese guy in Spain. Much of this is opaque to me but I know enough to nod and smile and get a twinge of nostalgia.

 

[WhatJustHappened]

I went to computer school in 99, I was useless with 1 before that....
It was hardware and software, Dos, Win 3.o/3.1, 95 etc...
I've been building my own desktops for everyone ever since .
I actually almost quit the class, I couldn't get it...at all.
I already knew electronics, because I had built many amps/timers etc.. before that.
I got really lucky, the kid next to me didn't understand Electronics/ Oscilloscope AT ALL, and I didn't understand Windows, but he already had experience with it.
We talked, you help me, I'll help you....
Both were top of class 9 months later. I probably would still be dumb without him, and he wouldn't know what a resistor did.

We both got pretty lucky that we sat right next to each other.

Kinda Useless story I know, but everyone learns a different way.

 

[Ghost of Autumn]

I went to computer school in 99, I was useless with 1 before that....
It was hardware and software, Dos, Win 3.o/3.1, 95 etc...
I've been building my own desktops for everyone ever since .
I actually almost quit the class, I couldn't get it...at all.
I already knew electronics, because I had built many amps/timers etc.. before that.
I got really lucky, the kid next to me didn't understand Electronics/ Oscilloscope AT ALL, and I didn't understand Windows, but he already had experience with it.
We talked, you help me, I'll help you....
Both were top of class 9 months later. I probably would still be dumb without him, and he wouldn't know what a resistor did.

We both got pretty lucky that we sat right next to each other.

Kinda Useless story I know, but everyone learns a different way.

I know next to nothing about electronics, but I'll be diving headfirst very soon. I make Halloween decorations as a hobby, and the next leap is to add some automation. I'm going to start with having my graveyard gates open on a delay when motion is detected, and maybe play some "squeaky hinge" sound at the same time.

Wife got me the Arduino, actuators, motion+magnetic sensors, motor controls/relays, etc for Christmas, now I just need to figure out how to program it all.

Hope she saved the receipts!

Return reason : "defective on arrival", definitely not the short circuit I accidentally created.

 

[WhatJustHappened]

It's fun to learn, Have a great time learning and setting it all up!
You'll feel a great sense of pride when you get everything working!
Good Luck!

 

[Patriot Missile]

 

[Patriot Missile]

This is how it begins Ian