[geeks] Software Bloat

[Joshua D Boyd]

On Mon, Dec 17, 2001 at 02:16:10PM -0800, Ken Hansen wrote:
> Wow, is it just me or does anyone else feel old too?
> 
> "... when BASIC had line numbers" indeed!

Well, of course, saying when BASIC had line numbers isn't the best way to put
it since my understanding is that BASIC originally didn't have line numbers.

I did do quite a bit of line number hacking in the late 80s (I was so proud of
drawing houses and triangles and stuff on the screen on my Toshiba T100).  And
then I continued using line numbers in basic until 1992ish when someone showed 
me how to use labels in quickbasic on the mac.  Woo wee.  That sure made life a
lot more fun.  Quickbasic on the mac was so cool.  I used it at a local 
university (not the one I'm now at though).
 
> Joshua, you crack me up... Maybe some day I'll explain
> to you why real programers only code up to column 71,
> and what it means to have a character in the 72nd
> column... ;^)

Hmm.
 
> Of course, you'll have to come visit me at the "old
> Coders Home", where we sit around and reminisce about
> punching humorous patterns with the papertape punch...

And where were you doing that?  Wasn't paper tape mostly gone by the time you
were a teen?  I know that where my dad worked (which wasn't cutting edge by any
means, being a mennonite church owned company in the thick of Lancaster PA ) in
the mid to late 80s paper tape wasn't around.  Before that they rented time on
another church owned companies computer, and I'm pretty sure that that also 
didn't use paper tape, though I could be wrong.

> Oh, and the joy we felt when we could upgrade to the
> "god-like" speed of 300 baud dial-up access to the
> mainframe!

I never upgraded to that ole 300 baud.  That's were I started with my cutting
edge Tandy M100.  OK, the closest I've ever had to a cutting edge computer was
a low end 386 after 486s had long been out, a P200 when P300s were the norm,
and a P2-350 dual when all my friends where getting P3-600s and better.  The 
only the cutting edge about computers around here is how the get used.

-- 
Joshua D. Boyd