Article View: alt.folklore.computers
Article #620778Re: Nostalgia
From: Charles Richmond
Date: Fri, 02 Mar 2018 05:04
Date: Fri, 02 Mar 2018 05:04
44 lines
4039 bytes
4039 bytes
On 3/1/2018 10:51 PM, Charlie Gibbs wrote: > On 2018-03-02, Walter Bushell <pr...@panix.com> wrote: > >> In article <3ve99dtbi7vu0jda6...@4ax.com>, >> J. Clarke <jclarke...@gmail.com> wrote: >> >>> Second, once >>> the habit develops, it's easy to run out of variable names and end up >>> using "l" (lower case L), which is identical to "1" (one) in many >>> fonts which can lead to very difficult to identify bugs. >> >> A simple keypuch error based on that. Very early (1967), three of us >> were trying to debug a compile error, from another programmer. After a >> few minutes, I said that's not an "IF" statement, that's a 1F (One F) >> statement. I think I had to pull the card to show them. > > My favourite design flaw in the IBM 029 keyboard was putting the vertical > bar (|) over the Y, immediately to the left of the numeral 1 that's over the > letter O. A quick scan of a printout or an interpreted card would easily > miss the fact that you over-reached when typing a 1. And a computer dumb > enough not to throw a data exception would let it hang around for a long time. > I found one in a mortgage master file, where it had been lurking for years. > > Another good one is in printers whose letter C looks a lot like a zero with > the right-hand edge cut off - as might happen if the hammer timing is a bit > out of adjustment. That one makes hex dumps easy to mis-interpret. > A certain Gary Larson black and white cartoon was pinned to the wall of one software engineer's cubicle at a PPoE: The scene is inside a launch control center. Through the window in the near distance, there is a rocket plowed head first into the ground... broken in half and burning. Inside the launch control center, you see two scientists in white lab coats looking over a computer listing on wide, fan-fold paper. One scientist says to the other: "I guess you're right. That is an 'l' instead of a one!" :-) -- numerist at aquaporin4 dot com
Technical Details
Message-ID:
<p7am19$h6k$1@dont-email.me>Path:
mbox-mo1.pugleaf.net!130ni5451wmv.0!nntp.google.com!proxad.net!feeder1-2.proxad.net!feeder.erje.net!2.eu.feeder.erje.net!eternal-september.org!feeder.eternal-september.org!reader02.eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mailReferences:
<p67o2727bv@news1.newsguy.com> <p6967v$t5b$1@dont-email.me> <p6q0kb$t5$1@reader2.panix.com> <2MWdnbgKEKQjRA_HnZ2dnUU78XHNnZ2d@giganews.com> <ffga3cFrifbU1@mid.individual.net> <ffgu5uF5nalU15@mid.individual.net> <1313349967.541300884.430961.peter_flass-yahoo.com@news.eternal-september.org> <p6vrnc$ue5$1@dont-email.me> <slrnp97b4c.eu5.grahn+nntp@frailea.sa.invalid> <0lq79dpae03ai000r0690fja58qcud4udu@4ax.com> <slrnp97s31.eu5.grahn+nntp@frailea.sa.invalid> <3ve99dtbi7vu0jda6ut1kcbemr6j4ta28v@4ax.com> <proto-1FD911.20443601032018@news.panix.com> <p7al8405j9@news1.newsguy.com>Show Full Headers
Complete Article Headers
X-Received: by 10.28.106.5 with SMTP id f5mr39739wmc.27.1519967083093; Thu, 01 Mar 2018 21:04:43 -0800 (PST) X-BeenThere: alt.folklore.computers@googlegroups.com Received: by 10.28.229.3 with SMTP id c3ls80679wmh.9.gmail; Thu, 01 Mar 2018 21:04:42 -0800 (PST) X-Received: by 10.28.210.85 with SMTP id j82mr40834wmg.29.1519967082387; Thu, 01 Mar 2018 21:04:42 -0800 (PST) Path: mbox-mo1.pugleaf.net!130ni5451wmv.0!nntp.google.com!proxad.net!feeder1-2.proxad.net!feeder.erje.net!2.eu.feeder.erje.net!eternal-september.org!feeder.eternal-september.org!reader02.eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: Charles Richmond <nume...@aquaporin4.com> Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Nostalgia Date: Thu, 1 Mar 2018 23:04:43 -0600 Organization: A noiseless patient Spider Lines: 44 Message-ID: <p7am19$h6k$1@dont-email.me> References: <p67o2727bv@news1.newsguy.com> <p6967v$t5b$1@dont-email.me> <p6q0kb$t5$1@reader2.panix.com> <2MWdnbgKEKQjRA_HnZ2dnUU78XHNnZ2d@giganews.com> <ffga3cFrifbU1@mid.individual.net> <ffgu5uF5nalU15@mid.individual.net> <1313349967.541300884.430961.peter_flass-yahoo.com@news.eternal-september.org> <p6vrnc$ue5$1@dont-email.me> <slrnp97b4c.eu5.grahn+nntp@frailea.sa.invalid> <0lq79dpae03ai000r0690fja58qcud4udu@4ax.com> <slrnp97s31.eu5.grahn+nntp@frailea.sa.invalid> <3ve99dtbi7vu0jda6ut1kcbemr6j4ta28v@4ax.com> <proto-1FD911.20443601032018@news.panix.com> <p7al8405j9@news1.newsguy.com> Reply-To: nume...@aquaporin4.com Mime-Version: 1.0 Injection-Date: Fri, 2 Mar 2018 05:04:41 -0000 (UTC) Injection-Info: reader02.eternal-september.org; posting-host="74b73ba5b32aeb844104b39347ff3c19"; logging-data="17620"; mail-complaints-to="ab...@eternal-september.org"; posting-account="U2FsdGVkX1/6Jf5/2cRPozkv9dv230Qf019HgM0scto=" User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; WOW64; rv:52.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/52.6.0 In-Reply-To: <p7al8405j9@news1.newsguy.com> Cancel-Lock: sha1:Iqh0Ud3+Xp8FxY7Dbc95d7AtPR0= Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit