6 ms·
I'm old enough to know he didn't carry a computer on the plane....
by troyk 13y ago
I'm old enough to know he didn't carry a computer on the plane....
- nknighthb 13y agoBut too young to know writing code and speccing data structures on paper (and/or napkins...) was quite common before airplane-friendly computers were available? (And for a long time after, really; ubiquitous ownership of laptops is a quite recent thing).
- DerpDerpDerp 13y agoI still prefer to write on paper on planes.
- sgt 13y agoMe too - although if it's code, then it's going to more like pseudo code or simply "concepts" and ideas.
- bluedino 13y agoFrom this Woz quote it was pretty common: "I wrote all my code on paper in hexadecimal. I couldn't afford an assembler to translate my programs into hexadecimal bytes, I did it myself. Even my BASIC interpreter is all hand written. I'd type 4K into the Apple I and ][ in about an hour. I, and many others too I think, could sit down and start typing hexadecimal in for a SMALL program to solve something that occured or something that somebody else wanted. I'd do this all the time for demos. I certainly don't remember which hexadecimal codes are which 6502 instructions any longer, but it was a part of life back then."
- pauljonas 13y agoWhen I started my programming career, my first boss did not know how to use a text editor. He could perform a randomizing routine in his head but he trembled at using a text editor -- he still used punched cards and/or a mainframe utility that emulated a punch card. And lots of programmers coded first on columnar grid paper (shades of green and white, demarcations at 8, 12, 16 to help you indent properly.
- csixty4 13y agoMy community college still had us writing C on huge tablets of that IBM grid paper in the late 90s. I can't imagine writing huge amounts of production-worthy code that way.
- simula67 13y agoPossibly stupid question : Why did he not write the assembler himself ?
- bluedino 13y agoI'd guess because of memory limitations. Some more info on those days: http://www.landsnail.com/apple/local/applewoz.htm http://www.landsnail.com/apple/local/applewoz.htm http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/JohnSzczepaniak/20130507/191813/ http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/JohnSzczepaniak/20130507/1918...
- WalterBright 13y agoI used to fill spiral notebooks with code back in the 70's. This was back when I'd have to go to the "computer center" to use the actual computer.
- Tloewald 13y agoFor that matter, pocket calculators programmable in BASIC started becoming quite inexpensive in the mid-80s.
- fearlessleader 13y agoOr pen or paper
- pyre 13y ago> pen or paper How did he do it with just paper? Origami? ;-)
- mturmon 13y agoAccording to this, Gates did some of the design, but Marc McDonald, employee #1 at MS, helped with the design, and did the coding in 1977: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_Allocation_Table#Original_8-bit_FAT http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_Allocation_Table#Original_... Like a lot of old stories remembered after-the-fact to make a point, it seems that the truth is more complicated.
- colmvp 13y agoThanks for pointing this out. It's all too common to overlook employee contributions to projects.
- mathattack 13y agoI think the point of the story wasn't proper attribution, it was a way for Gates to prod people to work faster.
- rbanffy 13y agoBy misappropriating their work?
- 011011100 13y agoI coded the entire linux operating system in one hour. Why can't you do something just as amazing with the same amount of time? "but appropriation of work isn't relevant at all!!!!!" Of course it's relevant. The prodding doesn't work if the justification for the prodding is a lie.
- DannyBee 13y agohttp://31.media.tumblr.com/981b9455b35ca551cbfd2227110b9da2/tumblr_mhgcs6PtMw1qgbu2uo1_1280.png http://31.media.tumblr.com/981b9455b35ca551cbfd2227110b9da2/...
- protomyth 13y agoAccording to one book (Hackers?), he wrote the loader code for BASIC for the Altair on the plane to NM. If I remember right, he did have a Compaq "portable" he lugged around in the early portable days. Something like http://oldcomputers.net/compaqi.html http://oldcomputers.net/compaqi.html It obviously came out after DOS / FAT.
- TheCoelacanth 13y agoThat was Paul Allen, if I remember correctly.
- protomyth 13y agoI'm pretty sure it was Bill Gates (although Paul Allen could of too). I thought the source was a Chaos Manor column back in the day.
- RockyMcNuts 13y agonah... they decided Paul should go because Bill still looked like he was a high school sophomore. http://harvardmagazine.com/2013/09/walter-isaacson-on-bill-gates-at-harvard http://harvardmagazine.com/2013/09/walter-isaacson-on-bill-g...
- jussij 13y agoPen and paper works just fine on a plane and I'm old enough to know that back in those days lots of coding was done that way. At one work place, I spent most of the day away from the computer (terminal) waiting for the operational boys to get their stuff done. I would spend most of my coding day scribbling out code changes onto the fanfold printout.
- derekp7 13y agoAnd today quite a few people complain about having to code on a whiteboard while at a job interview. How times have changed.
- iSnow 13y agoFor a lot of people, writing on a whiteboard with 4 prospective employers breathing down their neck is totally different than sitting on a plane or in a quiet corner alone with some paper to write on.
- InclinedPlane 13y agoPeople didn't write computer code in IDEs back then, or even directly in text editors really.