4 ms·

There's a great scene where young Pham, a kid from a medieval world, learns to maintain a 5000-year-old legacy code base on a starship: http://books.google.com

by ekidd 16y ago

There's a great scene where young Pham, a kid from a medieval world, learns to maintain a 5000-year-old legacy code base on a starship: http://books.google.com/books?id=GUUvxumMf6kC&lpg=PA226&ots=8pIM_7Rc9e&pg=PA225#v=onepage&q&f=false http://books.google.com/books?id=GUUvxumMf6kC&lpg=PA226&... Sura gave up on her debugging for the moment. "The word for all this is 'mature programming environment.' Basically, when hardware performance has been pushed to its final limit, and programmmers have had several centuries to code, you reach a point where there is far more signicant code than can be rationalized. The best you can do is understand the overall layering, and know how to search for the oddball tool that may come in handy—take the situation I have here." She waved at the dependency chart she had been working on. "We are low on working fluid for the coffins. Like a million other things, there was none for sale on dear old Canberra. Well, the obvious thing is to move the coffins near the aft hull, and cool by direct radiation. We don't have the proper equipment to support this—so lately, I've been doing my share of archeology. It seems that five hundred years ago, a similar thing happened after an in-system war at Torma. They hacked together a temperature maintenance package that is precisely what we need." "Almost precisely." Bret was grinning again. "With some minor revisions."

pavel_lishin 16y ago
I love the terms "programmer-at-arms" and "programmer archeologist." I wish more people read this book, so I could use the term and not have people look at me with a blank look in their eyes.
- stcredzero 16y ago
  The above excerpt is actually an accurate description of what I do at my day job! ("program archeology") My coworker, who's been working on and off with this code base for over 12 years, never fails to point out if any of my ideas was already implemented once before. So far, everything I've suggested since starting this job 3 months ago has already been done in the past.
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
- jsnell 16y ago
  My job title at a previous job was Software Archaeologist, inspired by ADitS. Though my boss then went on to explain it to a customer more as an Indiana Jones of programmers than as someone working on old and crufty systems.
andrewgodwin 16y ago
My favourite part of the program archaeology is when he digs right down to the core and discovers the computers are still keeping time in seconds since the time when man landed on the moon (and then discovers it's really a time a bit more than five months afterwards). I never did think of UNIX time as tied to the moon landings that closely, but it's a nice fact. It was still odd seeing small negative timestamps when we were working on spacelog.org, though...
powertower 16y ago
I started getting excited but then quickly realized that if I had to read a sci-fi novel about coding (or maintaining a codebase) I would throw up. I spend my days coding.
- lukev 16y ago
  It's not what the book is about, just a few interesting/realistic scenes. The book itself is epic and brilliant and spans almost every genre.
- vietor 16y ago
  Fortunately, not everybody hates their job. My worry about coding/hacking scenes in books is that authors usually do something dumb. That makes it all the more rewarding when they sidestep it with something amusing, as in the given example. Having read 'A Deepness in the Sky', it is good, interesting, and not about coding. You can probably read it safely without having flashbacks to your life.

by ekidd 16y ago

pavel_lishin 16y ago

I love the terms "programmer-at-arms" and "programmer archeologist." I wish more people read this book, so I could use the term and not have people look at me with a blank look in their eyes.

stcredzero 16y ago
The above excerpt is actually an accurate description of what I do at my day job! ("program archeology") My coworker, who's been working on and off with this code base for over 12 years, never fails to point out if any of my ideas was already implemented once before. So far, everything I've suggested since starting this job 3 months ago has already been done in the past.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
jsnell 16y ago
My job title at a previous job was Software Archaeologist, inspired by ADitS. Though my boss then went on to explain it to a customer more as an Indiana Jones of programmers than as someone working on old and crufty systems.

andrewgodwin 16y ago

My favourite part of the program archaeology is when he digs right down to the core and discovers the computers are still keeping time in seconds since the time when man landed on the moon (and then discovers it's really a time a bit more than five months afterwards). I never did think of UNIX time as tied to the moon landings that closely, but it's a nice fact. It was still odd seeing small negative timestamps when we were working on spacelog.org, though...

powertower 16y ago

I started getting excited but then quickly realized that if I had to read a sci-fi novel about coding (or maintaining a codebase) I would throw up. I spend my days coding.

lukev 16y ago
It's not what the book is about, just a few interesting/realistic scenes. The book itself is epic and brilliant and spans almost every genre.
vietor 16y ago
Fortunately, not everybody hates their job. My worry about coding/hacking scenes in books is that authors usually do something dumb. That makes it all the more rewarding when they sidestep it with something amusing, as in the given example. Having read 'A Deepness in the Sky', it is good, interesting, and not about coding. You can probably read it safely without having flashbacks to your life.