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Title should be "Six years of thinking allow programmer to solve problem in 5 minutes". I remember contracting for IBM in the 90s and we had a huge performance

Title should be "Six years of thinking allow programmer to solve problem in 5 minutes". I remember contracting for IBM in the 90s and we had a huge performance boost due to caching and, like the anecdote in this post, there was a slight chance of something going out of date. The IBM guys said "no thanks, IBM prefers bullet proof over fast".

toasted-subs 3y ago
Then ibm got outpaced by the rest of industry. Bulletproof typically means rigid in design. Trading one bag of worms for another.
- zwieback 3y ago
  Yep, especially as IT moved downmarket from mainframes run by government, military and large corporations to the average Joe, who can reboot, reinstall or just buy a new one.
leeoniya 3y ago
> Title should be "Six years of thinking allow programmer to solve problem in 5 minutes". "You didn't pay me $1k to press three buttons; you paid me $1k for knowing which three buttons to press." EDIT: oh, i see a version of this was already posted in another comment :)
HocusLocus 3y ago
(c.1986) Telephone company accounting system with System/38 (pre AS/400) and System R (early SQL), CL+RPGIII. The call rating process required half a dozen lookups to other tables to complete each record in a batch. Something that would be well handled by a modern join. But at the time the vendor was like, "Gee Ma it works! Ship it." Compiled RPG III was lightning fast and a lot like working in assembly with fixed/prealloc string handling. I made a template and adapted it for each table that cached recent lookups for each. 6x improvement. Then realized that since records were autonomous and batches run and posted separately, it was never necessary to process calls in chrono order. Pre-indexing on destination number resulted in cache hits almost all the time and 10x speed improvement over the 6x. When I asked my Dad how long something took, he'd say something like "2 years and 20 minutes." 2 years to get around to it. Mom took his habit into the real world and published an ad for the company with a cut out "Round Tuit" and copy, "How many times have you heard someone say, 'I'll do that when I get a round tuit.' Now that you have your very own Round Tuit, there's no limit to what you can accomplish!" Round Tuits were cut out and appeared on walls all over town.
- winrid 3y ago
  I think when I was 17 some old guy asked me why I hadn't changed my oil yet* and I said I hadn't got around to it. He ran into his shed and came out with a round piece of wood that said "to it" on it... So I changed the oil in his driveway. * The oil was still <5k mi old. People are funny.
  - ww520 3y ago
    That has the same level of validity as the jump to conclusion doormat as a product idea. Somebody should run with it.
drittich 3y ago
And let's be honest, most of those 6 years was figuring out what to name the variables.

toasted-subs 3y ago

Then ibm got outpaced by the rest of industry. Bulletproof typically means rigid in design. Trading one bag of worms for another.

zwieback 3y ago
Yep, especially as IT moved downmarket from mainframes run by government, military and large corporations to the average Joe, who can reboot, reinstall or just buy a new one.

leeoniya 3y ago

> Title should be "Six years of thinking allow programmer to solve problem in 5 minutes". "You didn't pay me $1k to press three buttons; you paid me $1k for knowing which three buttons to press." EDIT: oh, i see a version of this was already posted in another comment :)

HocusLocus 3y ago

(c.1986) Telephone company accounting system with System/38 (pre AS/400) and System R (early SQL), CL+RPGIII. The call rating process required half a dozen lookups to other tables to complete each record in a batch. Something that would be well handled by a modern join. But at the time the vendor was like, "Gee Ma it works! Ship it." Compiled RPG III was lightning fast and a lot like working in assembly with fixed/prealloc string handling. I made a template and adapted it for each table that cached recent lookups for each. 6x improvement. Then realized that since records were autonomous and batches run and posted separately, it was never necessary to process calls in chrono order. Pre-indexing on destination number resulted in cache hits almost all the time and 10x speed improvement over the 6x. When I asked my Dad how long something took, he'd say something like "2 years and 20 minutes." 2 years to get around to it. Mom took his habit into the real world and published an ad for the company with a cut out "Round Tuit" and copy, "How many times have you heard someone say, 'I'll do that when I get a round tuit.' Now that you have your very own Round Tuit, there's no limit to what you can accomplish!" Round Tuits were cut out and appeared on walls all over town.

winrid 3y ago
I think when I was 17 some old guy asked me why I hadn't changed my oil yet* and I said I hadn't got around to it. He ran into his shed and came out with a round piece of wood that said "to it" on it... So I changed the oil in his driveway. * The oil was still <5k mi old. People are funny.
- ww520 3y ago
  That has the same level of validity as the jump to conclusion doormat as a product idea. Somebody should run with it.

drittich 3y ago

And let's be honest, most of those 6 years was figuring out what to name the variables.