> I'm thinking for example of programmers working with then-slow disk and drum storage who had to play elaborate timing tricks with their code based on when the

> I'm thinking for example of programmers working with then-slow disk and drum storage who had to play elaborate timing tricks with their code based on when they expected data on the disk to rotate into position under the read heads. There was an epic story I once read that revolved around this and it’s going to drive me crazy until I find it. Edit: Found it! It’s from “The Story of Mel, a Real Programmer”: > Mel never wrote time-delay loops, either, even when the balky Flexowriter required a delay between output characters to work right. He just located instructions on the drum so each successive one was just past the read head when it was needed; the drum had to execute another complete revolution to find the next instruction. https://users.cs.utah.edu/~elb/folklore/mel.html https://users.cs.utah.edu/~elb/folklore/mel.html