Post AxAg1vHJbTBU9FaeVk by dryak@mstdn.science
(DIR) More posts by dryak@mstdn.science
(DIR) Post #Ax82hG0F4NGHoZq6YS by futurebird@sauropods.win
2025-08-13T13:44:34Z
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@lizardbill I don't trust people who talk about "lines of code" like that's what you are producing when you are programing. How much code did you write (or have the machine write?) who cares. Tell me how many problems you solved that no one else could solve as efficiently. Tell me about how easy your programs are to use, how clear they are. Show me something impressive.
(DIR) Post #Ax87kwgtJT2QqfMm5g by hypolite@friendica.mrpetovan.com
2025-08-13T13:54:43Z
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@futurebird @lizardbill Something i discovered awfully late in my programming career is that a piece of software is only as good as its error handling. Can it recover gracefully? Can it reliably inform the developer, even better, the user? Does it leave the program in a corrupted state, etc...Error handling isn't the most glamorous aspect of software development, and because of this it really shows the level of care and thoughtfulness that went into it. That's in part why I love git so much. Sure, it can be counter-intuitive at first, but most of the errors you encounter have a clear path towards resolution that is spelled out by the software itself.
(DIR) Post #Ax8FMO7QzwdAJDaBxw by publius@mastodon.sdf.org
2025-08-13T16:06:28Z
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@woe2you @silvermoon82 @lizardbill Good ol' Charles Proteus Steinmetz!
(DIR) Post #Ax8FvxcWzog4YC5f4C by publius@mastodon.sdf.org
2025-08-13T16:12:54Z
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@lizardbill “Founder”? Sound to me as though the guy is, rather, “completely sunk”.
(DIR) Post #Ax8G4QgwnH9j1vC6L2 by tantramar@mastodon.social
2025-08-13T16:14:21Z
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@lizardbill See, the problem with your statement, @futurebird, is that you’re smarter than most programmers (and all managers).
(DIR) Post #Ax8KKfzs3Zmiwr32rg by pluralistic@mamot.fr
2025-08-13T13:12:34Z
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@evdelen @lizardbill Bill Gates called IBM's method of paying programmers by the line of code, "The race to build the world's heaviest airplane."
(DIR) Post #Ax9ELOVy8ThqRzys8e by afx@infosec.exchange
2025-08-13T14:39:17Z
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@pluralistic @evdelen @lizardbill Where does that come from? Not during my time at the IBM lab...
(DIR) Post #Ax9ELQ1CXqHd79bKSW by pluralistic@mamot.fr
2025-08-13T15:08:42Z
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@afx @evdelen @lizardbill I believe the quote is from the mid-1980s.
(DIR) Post #Ax9ELR44eeAwMLx8Zk by purrperl@kinkycats.org
2025-08-13T22:05:48Z
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@pluralistic @afx @evdelen @lizardbill Other anecdotes:1) IBM managers realized that programmers were just sitting there typing on keyboards, and getting paid a lot more than typists, for ( what they thought ) was a similar, slightly more technical job. So IBM starts firing programmers and replacing them with typists, with some training thrown in.2) Airconditioning failed at an IBM office and programmers had to seek management approval to take off the ties ( they all wore business suits ).
(DIR) Post #Ax9ELRrLhRagpB0UNc by clayfoot@mastodon.social
2025-08-13T23:32:07Z
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@purrperl @pluralistic @afx @evdelen @lizardbill My mother was one of those punch card programmers. She moved to Florida, tried to get a job, and was told, "We don't hire women as programmers." So, she took one of those keypunch operator jobs, instead.
(DIR) Post #Ax9ELSdYoC9hEhYzWi by tomjennings@tldr.nettime.org
2025-08-14T03:29:43Z
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@clayfootRoughly speaking, programmers were all women, from the eniac days (40s) because "everyone knew" the machines the men made did the calculations, they just needed some clerical types to make the arrangements and women were good with tedious work (sic) and couldn't be mathematicians like the men. Surprise, the women were good at it; the eniac learned how to (plug) program the machines by reading the schematics.Same logic applied to 1st gen stored program machines, but eventually (early to mid 50s) the men noticed (sic) programming was actually an/the critical skill. By the late 1950s programming was a male occupation. Back in england, there was an explicit, stated, plan to get women out of programming. Here in the US it was done the usual American way (shit pay and preferential hiring). We ended up with Mel Kaye and overtly macho programming that still exists today. There's some but not a lot written about this era and process. It was quite explicit. @purrperl @pluralistic @afx @evdelen @lizardbill
(DIR) Post #Ax9ILxntKbzNiLtI9o by wendynather@infosec.exchange
2025-08-14T04:14:43Z
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@tomjennings @clayfoot @purrperl @pluralistic @afx @evdelen @lizardbill Mel Kaye wasn’t one of the “macho” programmers; his story was written to make fun of the “real programmers” fad.
(DIR) Post #Ax9Im3dCHsp1JjKb7g by tomjennings@tldr.nettime.org
2025-08-14T04:19:27Z
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@wendynatherIt is true I read that story decades ago. But I read some of his actual code there in the LGP-21 Programmers Manual. His code is pretty obscure, but that's half the nature of the machine and environment (he wrote most of many of the lgp 30 and 21 libraries and who knows what else).But I honestly know nothing of the man, so I should not have more than juxtaposed him in that era. @clayfoot @purrperl @pluralistic @afx @evdelen @lizardbill
(DIR) Post #Ax9Iuj2yBlVu5AWGLg by tomjennings@tldr.nettime.org
2025-08-14T04:21:03Z
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@wendynatherThe magically terminating loop business of the tale is an example somewhere in the manual! @clayfoot @purrperl @pluralistic @afx @evdelen @lizardbill
(DIR) Post #Ax9J7eoVEuTYiXv292 by wendynather@infosec.exchange
2025-08-14T04:23:22Z
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@tomjennings @clayfoot @purrperl @pluralistic @afx @evdelen @lizardbill My dad was the one who wrote the story. 😉
(DIR) Post #Ax9REabC6hd3J3VhY0 by tomjennings@tldr.nettime.org
2025-08-14T05:54:15Z
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@wendynatherNo!! Wow cool! Damn I didn't pick up on your name!! What a small world. I read the "real programmers don't...." story when it was new or newish. I thought it was apocryphal until I got this lgp 21, spent time finding documentation, found "M Kaye" all over it.... And all the self modifying code. ... I'm working on a cp/m machine lately, using my favorite text editor, Pmate, and the configurator for it is just a bunch of teco like macros that poke bytes directly into the binary running in memory, then tou use a command to save the modified binary to disk. 1980 code. Now self modifying code (executing stuff from the net) is all fancy and sooo much worse! @clayfoot @purrperl @pluralistic @afx @evdelen @lizardbill
(DIR) Post #Ax9YTvEmM61rL2HfuK by mardor@ruhr.social
2025-08-14T07:15:26Z
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@tomjennings That makes the work of recently deceased Dame Stephanie Shirley (née Vera Buchthal) even more impressive. She founded a software firm in the 60s and hired only female programmers. The software for the black box of the Concorde was written by her team.https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Shirleyhttps://www.steveshirley.com/@clayfoot @purrperl @pluralistic @afx @evdelen @lizardbill
(DIR) Post #Ax9wgOcRL49wq3pewy by wendynather@infosec.exchange
2025-08-14T11:46:38Z
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@tomjennings @clayfoot @purrperl @pluralistic @afx @evdelen @lizardbill Yes, about six months before my dad passed away, he got an email from Mel saying, “So, I hear you’ve been talking about me on the Internet …” They were back in touch after all those years.
(DIR) Post #AxAg1vHJbTBU9FaeVk by dryak@mstdn.science
2025-08-14T20:14:40Z
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@tomjennings @clayfoot @purrperl @pluralistic @afx @evdelen @lizardbillOn the other side of the iron curtain, late ~60s:my mom went to study nuclear physics, got to do a lot of numerical analysis, thus got to run computations on the university's first mainframe, and thus got to write her own program (initially in machine code because not trusting those new fangled high level languages) but then eventually in FORTAN.BUT...
(DIR) Post #AxAgG5jLXVIacRSR6G by tomjennings@tldr.nettime.org
2025-08-14T20:17:20Z
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@wendynatherWow that's amazing. Lol I would ask him for an autograph for sure. I never do that! @clayfoot @purrperl @pluralistic @afx @evdelen @lizardbill
(DIR) Post #AxAv9J3f5UxfEuBO1w by tomjennings@tldr.nettime.org
2025-08-14T23:04:11Z
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@clayfootDammitall, I can't find a single book I know I have. The one about the British explicit project to rid computing of women. The one written by a woman who started and ran a decades long consultancy for women programmers, 1960s I think, accommodating child rearing. At least one more. I'll find them. @purrperl @pluralistic @afx @evdelen @lizardbill
(DIR) Post #AxBYlkWdJGXJe03W5Y by dryak@mstdn.science
2025-08-14T20:16:11Z
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@tomjennings @clayfoot @purrperl @pluralistic @afx @evdelen @lizardbill ... she also got to punch her own cards, because not trusting the card punchers students.By the late 70s shes had abandonned her PhD and fully moved to consulting in-and giving lectures in- computer science.(and, as it was the best air conditionned room in the computing building, napping in the CPU room on a nest built out of discarded printputs while prengant with me.)...
(DIR) Post #AxBYlm6pQB5EYXzw92 by dryak@mstdn.science
2025-08-14T20:18:03Z
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@tomjennings @clayfoot @purrperl @pluralistic @afx @evdelen @lizardbill ...(I came that close of being born inside a mainframe. Or as I tell: I'm 46 years old, but been around computers for 47 years).She and her late sister (a professor in Biology) have been inspirations for my own carreer.
(DIR) Post #AxBYlmvWNhdJ5liQ9w by tomjennings@tldr.nettime.org
2025-08-15T06:28:05Z
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@dryakThat's pretty wild! @clayfoot @purrperl @pluralistic @afx @evdelen @lizardbill
(DIR) Post #AxwAsjvOfv63L1YWI4 by CozyLife@clew.lol
2025-09-06T18:11:55.717917Z
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@hypolite @lizardbill @futurebird Nigger Faggots are Not Human.Bring them to the Gas Chambers.