-=> Vk3jed wrote to Sampsa <=-
Sa> SWAG was awesome, you could find a TP unit in there to do basically
Sa> ANYTHING (it was like the CPAN [perl] or pip/distutils [Python] for TP)
Vk> Ahh, I see. Most of my TP coding took place under TP3.x, before units
Vk> came along. :)
The "units" thing was part of the reason Wirth develped Modula-2 -
"separate compilation" (i.e. just compiling the bits you've change and then
linking all the object code) was a Big Deal back when 300 people would share
a single VAX, it saved a LOT of CPU of time.
I remember working on a crazy development system at Nokia (the Networks
section, not mobile phones) section back in the mid-90s:
You'd develop your code in TNSDL (a subset of SDL, this graphical
flowcharting thing that you could weirdly enough write in text) and C,
submitting the compilation job (a VMS DCL shell script) to a queue on the
central VAX cluster, and then go for a 3 hour break.
After 3 hours or so, you'd either get a compile error (missing semi-colon?
Fix it and recompile for 3 hours again lol) or a binary blob.
You'd then download said binary blob, write it to a floppy disk, take it
to THE ACTUAL FAKE DX200 PHONE EXCHANGE in the basement, type some obscure
commands at the console and watch a whole room full of blinking lights and
electrical relays reboot itself. It was quite spectacular.
The code would then usually run for roughly 3 milliseconds, crash, print
out a hex dump of <something>, that you'd take to the gurus upstairs to
decipher.
The next morning they'd tell you to change line X of file Y.
24 hour+ code + compile + test cycle. With my own office (door and everything):
BEST JOB EVER!
Vk> Yeah, I never got to learn enough C for it to be useful.
Well unless you're writing freaking device drivers or code for a spacecraft
then it's hard to get C to do useful things in any reasonable amount of
time (see example above).
And even for the spacecraft I'd probably use Ada since with C you'd probably
end up dereferencing some pointer wrong and your $30 billion space craft now
crashes into the Sun ;P
Sa> Now I code exclusively in Python (unless I have to do something weird
Sa> and platform specific, then I write a small C library and import it
Sa> into my Python app using ctypes).
Vk> I'll have to take a look at Python. :)
Yup, please do. I'm still on version 2.7 (the jump to v3 changes the syntax
and like all developers [well, I'm more or a dilettante nowadays than a
real dev] are lazy, so I haven't migrated yet).
Their own tutorial is pretty decent, picked up the language in like a
week from it: https://docs.python.org/3/tutorial/
Sampsa
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