12 ms·
And that, kids, is why we call it a “Patch”
- arnarbi 10y agoMy favorite is "log", named after logbooks. Logbooks have maritime origins, where the ships speed is recorded. Even today, speedometer on ships are in many languages called "a log" since the original method consists of throwing an actual log overboard with a string attached to it. The string would have knots with regular intervals. To determine the speed, you count how many knots pass through your hand in a certain time.
- logicallee 10y ago> To determine the speed, you count how many knots pass through your hand in a certain time. But how did they count "a certain time"? (Before stopwatches).
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- ebbv 10y agoMechanical pocket watches or ship's clocks. They were expensive but accurate enough.
- Isamu 10y agoSandglasses were around for a long time.
- taneq 10y agoWell, we assume it was a long time but maybe sandglasses were really inaccurate.
- iaw 10y agoI'm not sure if it would matter if they were really inaccurate if the ship used the same sandglass and rope. I've read about the shipping log -> world map work [1] where it details that the speeds/distances for a given group of boats had different errors which the gentlemen developed a technique to resolve. [1] https://priceonomics.com/a-map-of-the-world-made-from-shipping-logs/ https://priceonomics.com/a-map-of-the-world-made-from-shippi...
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- nitroll 10y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marine_sandglass https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marine_sandglass
- lazyant 10y agoThe origins of precise clocks is because ships needed to calculate how far they had travelled in terms of longitude (eastwast/westward. How far you've travel north/south is easy to calculate by how high the sun goes). The British crown established an award for whoever could come up with a precise clock of this reason, it's a fascinating story, I recommend the book "Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time" by Dava Sobel.
- Fuzzwah 10y agoAlso if you're interested in inventors from the late 17th Century, I highly recommend: "The Man Who Knew Too Much: The inventive life of Robert Hooke"
- xyclos 10y agoAnd I suppose that's also the origin of measuring speed in "knots" (?)
- haylem 10y agoYes Update: my original answer was short because, well, I'm a sailor. But for more, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knot_(unit) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knot_(unit)
- arnarbi 10y agoYep. For scale: if you count for one minute, a knot every 30m or so on the string will give you your speed in nautical miles per hour (=knots)
- jzwinck 10y agoThings like this are great to remind ourselves of some of the rationale for the ways things are. When I worked at a company which used a lot of Fortran, I kept a punch card at my desk. Among other things this made it easier to explain to new people why there was a column limit for code. Eventually an HR person came around and told me to remove the card because the top management was coming to visit soon. Among other things this made it easier to understand the role of HR in a large company.
- scrollaway 10y ago> Eventually an HR person came around and told me to remove the card because the top management was coming to visit soon. Among other things this made it easier to understand the role of HR in a large company. What on earth?
- ptasci67 10y agoYeah I am with you here. Why would you not want management to know you have an educational punch card?
- MrBuddyCasino 10y agoMaybe just to make the desks look clean? But yeah, HR... everyone's favourite department, it seems.
- iainmerrick 10y agoHR's function at a large company is to defend the company against you.
- hoorayimhelping 10y agoOooooh and also, if you're not paying for the product, you -are- the product. Leave these glib platitudes at Reddit.
- kweinber 10y agoThere were patches to machines, cables, memory modules, dresses, etc etc before punch cards. They are all better metaphors than that picture because they offer functionality and aren't just binarily subtractive like the picture.
- saycheese 10y agoFirst punch card control system was made in 1725, so it's not exactly a new technology. Source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punched_card https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punched_card
- tyingq 10y agoThe patch panel on the enigma encryption devices seem like an apt metaphor for patching code.
- saycheese 10y agoHere's a photo of the first computer "bug" from 1947: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13404211 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13404211
- grymoire1 10y agoIncorrect. It was the first case of a software bug being an actual bug. In other words - a true pun. The first computer bug was found in 1843 by Ada Lovelace. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_bug#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_bug#History Thomas Edison used the term bug to indicate a flaw in 1873 http://theinstitute.ieee.org/tech-history/technology-history/did-you-know-edison-coined-the-term-bug http://theinstitute.ieee.org/tech-history/technology-history...
- Retric 10y agoPunch card's date back to 1725 so the term may relate to literal bugs. Though, not in what we think of as computers.
- saycheese 10y agoConcept of insects getting into computing machines is likely as old as such machines; oldest I'm aware of might be the Antikythera mechanism, which some estimate to be as old as 200BC. As for the "correctness" of "bug" - appears you agree this is the first historically documented reference to an insect being the source of a computing error and the "quotes" infer this means insect, though agree this might not be obvious to some.
- grymoire1 10y agoThis is why the DEL key is all ones. It was used to overpunch the wrong letter on a paper tape and replace it with a character that meant ignore (delete) it. As done on an ASR-33 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teletype_Model_33 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teletype_Model_33
- muterad_murilax 10y agoI'm sorry, "all ones"?
- ufo 10y agoThe ASCII code for DEL is 127, which is 1111111 in binary.
- muterad_murilax 10y agoAh, of course. :) Thanks for the clarification!
- alblue 10y agoYup, I talked about this (and the origins of ASCII and why Ctrl+M is new line etc) in a talk I gave at the end of last year entitled "A brief history of Unicode". The video recording has just been published on InfoQ: https://www.infoq.com/presentations/unicode-history https://www.infoq.com/presentations/unicode-history
- mdrzn 10y agoReally interesting! Thanks for sharing.
- tomrod 10y agoThat's wonderful!
- ajross 10y agoThat's amusing, but the linguistics sounds wrong to me. The "patch" tool was written by Larry Wall (of Perl fame) in the early 80's based on the preexisting diff format. Neither had much ancestry in common with paper tape storage, which was never really a Unix thing.
- bboreham 10y agoYou think Larry Wall chose the name with no reference to existing terminology?
- ajross 10y agoI'm saying there's no evidence that this terminology has anything to do with paper tape
- raldi 10y agoIntroduction of patch: https://groups.google.com/d/msg/net.unix-wizards/SDJZ28k40Co/iE5ekm8M1qYJ https://groups.google.com/d/msg/net.unix-wizards/SDJZ28k40Co... Larry Wall using the term "patch" prior to that: https://groups.google.com/d/msg/net.news.b/HhK847iU7ZA/7Wox76tK9bQJ https://groups.google.com/d/msg/net.news.b/HhK847iU7ZA/7Wox7... (It was already a well-established term.)
- garrettr_ 10y agoMy favorite is "monkey-patch," which came from engineers incorrectly reproducing an earlier term, "guerilla patch", as "gorilla patch": https://web.archive.org/web/20120730014107/http://wiki.zope.org/zope2/MonkeyPatch https://web.archive.org/web/20120730014107/http://wiki.zope.....
- z3t4 10y agobugs also used to be real bugs
- valarauca1 10y agoFor those interested Grace Hopper helped popularize this term In 1946, when Hopper was released from active duty, she joined the Harvard Faculty at the Computation Laboratory where she continued her work on the Mark II and Mark III. Operators traced an error in the Mark II to a moth trapped in a relay, coining the term bug. This bug was carefully removed and taped to the log book. Stemming from the first bug, today we call errors or glitches in a program a bug. Reference (wikipedia) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_bug https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_bug Reference (which wikipedia cites) http://ei.cs.vt.edu/~history/Hopper.Danis.html http://ei.cs.vt.edu/~history/Hopper.Danis.html
- haylem 10y agoGrace Hopper (grasshopper) popularizing bugs... Can't make this stuff up.
- hk__2 10y agoThat’s not true. The word “bug” has been used for problems in engineering well before computers; the funny story we all heard about a moth trapped in a relay causing a _bug_ in the Harvard Mark II is from 1947. Edison himself used the word back in 1878. The Wikipedia article about “Software bug” is pretty interesting: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_bug#Etymology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_bug#Etymology
- kayamon 10y ago<sigh> no it isn't. The word 'patch' was used to mean 'a small fix' hundreds of years before computers were even invented. e.g. patching a hole in a sweater.
- newsat13 10y agoDon't be a spoilsport :-) Always cooler to retro-actively patch the origins of popular terms..
- kayamon 10y agoDid you know the letter 'A' was invented for the 1983 TV show, the A-Team?
- j2kun 10y agoIs there an old use of the word patch that doesn't directly relate to physical holes (eg., would someone call fixing a tear a "patch"?). If no, then the line of reasoning still makes sense, because without punch cards there would be no physical holes to patch.
- derefr 10y agoI would wonder what term has been used historically for "a small fix to a large conceptual design after flaws have been pointed out." In the modern day, that's almost always "a patch": mathematical theorems get patches, architectural plans get patches, etc. When did this usage start, and what came before it?
- imh 10y agoYeah. When referring to non-physical things, 'patch up' is basically interchangeable with 'mend.' Patching up a relationship is a common usage that comes to mind.
- kgdinesh 10y agoWhat about "Monkey Patch"?