🚀 go-pugleaf

On Sat, 17 Feb 2018 20:24:34 +0000, Charlie Gibbs wrote:

> On 2018-02-17, Peter Flass <peter...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> 
>> I think most of us started out writing impenetrable, commentless code.
>> When you're doing a student project it's A) small, B) completed quickly
>> enough that you usually don't forget how it's working C)
>> keypunched/typed by you D) run once and thrown away.  In my experience
>> that's the biggest step from student programming assignments to
>> production work-the code may be complex and had to be understood by
>> lots of people, perhaps years later.
> 
> And one of them might be you.

Exactly. Might be worth recounting this story (possibly a repeat, but...)

About 15 years ago I had a need for a particular program on a PC. It was 
a one-off, and it had to be in BASIC, as the machine wasn't connected to 
anything else - all I could do was move small files using INTERLNK/
INTERSVR (remember those?)

I searched the Internet and found an ideal program. I downloaded it, 
transferred it to the PC and it did exactly what I wanted.

Being me, I had a look at the source code. The more I looked at it, the 
more mystified I became by the style of programming. It was how I might 
have written it.

Then it hit me. I *had* written it, a further 15 years before. I had sent 
it to various people but not bothered keeping a copy. It had come back to 
me!



-- 
Using UNIX since v6 (1975)...

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