Article View: alt.folklore.computers
Article #620665Re: Nostalgia
From: Charles Richmond
Date: Sun, 18 Feb 2018 22:45
Date: Sun, 18 Feb 2018 22:45
41 lines
3755 bytes
3755 bytes
On 2/17/2018 3:28 PM, Bob Eager wrote: > 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! > And it came home wagging its tail behind it... and you discovered that *you* were the Great Stone Face!!! ;-) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Stone_Face_(Hawthorne) -- numerist at aquaporin4 dot com
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X-Received: by 10.55.170.149 with SMTP id t143mr9770649qke.39.1518993892974; Sun, 18 Feb 2018 14:44:52 -0800 (PST) X-BeenThere: alt.folklore.computers@googlegroups.com Received: by 10.55.192.130 with SMTP id v2ls3969432qkv.0.gmail; Sun, 18 Feb 2018 14:44:52 -0800 (PST) X-Received: by 10.55.26.91 with SMTP id a88mr9682831qka.35.1518993892029; Sun, 18 Feb 2018 14:44:52 -0800 (PST) Path: mbox-mo1.pugleaf.net!m4ni146qte.0!nntp.google.com!peer03.iad!feed-me.highwinds-media.com!peer03.am4!peer.am4.highwinds-media.com!news.highwinds-media.com!news.unit0.net!eternal-september.org!feeder.eternal-september.org!reader02.eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: Charles Richmond <nume...@aquaporin4.com> Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Nostalgia Date: Sun, 18 Feb 2018 16:45:03 -0600 Organization: A noiseless patient Spider Lines: 41 Message-ID: <p6cvl3$h4b$1@dont-email.me> References: <p641l0$7er$1@dont-email.me> <vsedne5li_0xfxjHnZ2dnUU7-fOdnZ2d@giganews.com> <1798275321.540421278.448699.peter_flass-yahoo.com@news.eternal-september.org> <fennrjFber7U1@mid.individual.net> <p671b4212b3@news2.newsguy.com> <p672qv$74m$1@dont-email.me> <p67o2727bv@news1.newsguy.com> <p6967v$t5b$1@dont-email.me> <1415250544.540572098.234213.peter_flass-yahoo.com@news.eternal-september.org> <p6a3222a0@news7.newsguy.com> <ferl3eFbp23U13@mid.individual.net> Reply-To: nume...@aquaporin4.com Mime-Version: 1.0 Injection-Date: Sun, 18 Feb 2018 22:44:51 -0000 (UTC) Injection-Info: reader02.eternal-september.org; posting-host="01f2394503bd1a9e5f59ed60d7cfadb9"; logging-data="17547"; mail-complaints-to="ab...@eternal-september.org"; posting-account="U2FsdGVkX1+Kew53I7clcRAKYsc1mvkFayznzWKidNY=" User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; WOW64; rv:52.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/52.6.0 In-Reply-To: <ferl3eFbp23U13@mid.individual.net> Cancel-Lock: sha1:nXW8KWkTru47ctcrDgvonHp2Qtk= X-Received-Body-CRC: 451465479 X-Received-Bytes: 3329 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit