🚀 go-pugleaf

On 16/02/2018 23:04, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
> On 2018-02-16, Gareth's Downstairs Computer
> <headstone255.but.n...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> 
>> On 16/02/2018 16:36, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
>>
>>> On 2018-02-16, Huge <Huge@nowhere.much.invalid> wrote:
>>>
>>>> On 2018-02-15, Peter Flass <peter...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> [22 lines snipped]
>>>>
>>>>> The nostalgia is for the sights, sounds, and smells those days. I can still
>>>>> recall leaning over the 1132 printer waiting for my printout to start.
>>>>> We're also nostalgic for out first acquaintance with the wonders of
>>>>> computers. Now every kid over 8 knows more than we did 50 years ago.
>>>>
>>>> I consider that unlikely.
>>>
>>> Agreed.  I can't accept that the creators of the Internet don't know
>>> as much as the script kiddie who abuses it.
>>>
>>> Too many doting parents think their kid is a computer genius
>>> simply because he knows how to click a mouse.
>>
>> I once contrated in a company where the meme that kids were
>> ace on computers was held. The son of one of the directors had
>> produced their first computerised product, all in machine code,
>> and all typed in manually into a "Softy" PROM programmer.
> 
> Well, don't keep us in suspense.  Did it work?  Did it work well?
> 

Yes, it did work and sold well. Upgrading though was such a pain that
they recoded in assembler *WITHOUT ANY COMMENTS* because, based on their
experience with hexadecimal machine code, assembler was "self documenting"!

I was contracted to work on a range of PID controllers for fermentation
vessels (Temperature, pH, Dissolved Oxygen, etc) and when I said that
they should let it be done in C because of all the maths involved they
declined, so I spent much time developing 32 bit arithmetic in 8 bit
assembler, which took longer to do (and was thus more expensive) than
had C been permitted.

The division routine was faultless, but took several days to debug
because I was doing easy to follow divisions such as 300,000,000 (hex)
divided by 3 and using an early hex-capable pocket calculator with
only 7 segment displays, was misreading the B in a hex answer as a 6.

Live and learn!