[geeks] Software Bloat

[Ken Hansen]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Joshua D Boyd" <jdboyd at cs.millersville.edu>
To: <geeks at sunhelp.org>
Sent: Monday, December 17, 2001 10:30 PM
Subject: Re: [geeks] Software Bloat


> On Mon, Dec 17, 2001 at 03:42:03PM -0800, Ken Hansen wrote:

> > What goes i the last 8 positions? Why would ISPF allow
> > a person to turn off display of columns 73 -> 80?
> >
> > Hint - because the average user doesn't care about the
> > contents, but what is it that goes on a punch card
> > that a user wouldn't care to see on a "card image"
> > file ("Big Iron" talk for a test file...)?
> >
> > Final hint - the contents of the last 8 columns are
> > only needed if you actually *punch* cards and carry
> > them around in the physical space...
>
> Hmm, 72 bits for code, 8 for an ascii representation of the first 72?
>
> Nope.  Still no real idea.

Line numbers!

See, if you had a tray of cards, and you happened to notice a very cute
"operator" and walked into the wall (looking at her instead of where you are
going), the cards go everywhere!

By placing line numbers in the last 8 columns (rarely used), you could
easily put that jumble of FORTAN IV code back together. Another trick was to
take a marker and draw a diagonal line from one corner to the other of the
tray, but that was not as easy as line numbers... You could just drop your
jumble of cards into a sorter and set it to order the cards by the values in
the last eight columns.

Some programs checked that the line numbers were inthe right sequence, and
if they were not, they threw an exception (dropped the cards into a hopper,
to be fed into a sorter for later use)...

Ken


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