When I was young and started programming Pascal four decades ago I drank Coke for caffeine.
In 1984, I switched from regular coke to the newly introduced Diet Coke.
Everyone was afraid of the (then) new sweetener in it, which some said causes brain damage.
I said, if it does cause brain damage, we won't really know for twenty years!
Soon after 2004, which is twenty years later, I began programming in Java.
-- The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
Starting Score:
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(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 14 2020, @07:56PM
(5 children)
by Anonymous Coward
on Monday September 14 2020, @07:56PM (#1050953)
Well, to be fair to the Coca-Cola company, I think you were already showing signs of dementia decades before by choosing to program in Pascal. Just sayin'.
But in designing our software system in 1980-81, for microcomputers there weren't a whole lot of other choices other than BASIC. Not only was Pascal far higher level than BASIC, the p-System in particular offered cross platform portability. The p-System also offered much greater code density on small microcomputers. p-Code was far more dense and high level than BASIC.
We wanted cross platform. So UCSD p-System [wikipedia.org] was our choice. It ran in the microcomputers we wanted (Apple II, Apple ///, IBM PC and Corvus Concept) but also ran on other systems that we had no current interest in (DEC PDP-11, Z80, 68000, TI 99/4a, others). Later, we did purchase a version of the p-System that ran on Macintosh with text screen, before we could develop the very first GUI version of our applications.
The p-System provided us (mostly) binary portability between systems. The Apple II and Apple /// both ran p-System version II, while other platforms ran version IV. But we had 100% source code compatibility.
And this was in 1981 and subsequent years.
At this point in time, you couldn't just buy an off the shelf database that was the same on all these different systems. So we rolled our own balanced 2 for 3 b-tree indexed file system. Later on when we ported to IBM PC I had to hand write x86 assembler because the ROM based screen functions were not fast enough nor sophisticated enough.
It is more than Pascal. But for the era I'm talking about, I"m not sure what you would actually be complaining about.
It was way ahead of its time. Cross platform binary compatibility like Java. And the same OS on all systems, with same utilities, linkers, compilers, assembler, etc, like Linux.
-- The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
Just reminiscing. Our hardware requirements were pretty steep at that time. Between 128 K and 256 K bytes of memory. And a 10, 20 or 40 GB drive (costing about $5000 to $7000). Still a complete system, with our expensive software might run in the neighborhood of $10 K to $17 K depending on hardware and number of workstations, but was CHEAP compared to systems from IBM which might start at $35 K and go way up for multiple workstations. And that was in 1982 ish dollars.
Since the Apple II topped out at 48 K at that time, it was the first platform we dropped.
Years later, as IBM took over the PC world, we got a p-System that ran as an MS-DOS executable from a Canadian company Datalex. Not having to repartition the disk and dual boot for the p-System vs MS DOS was a good improvement. We gradually dropped other platforms by attrition.
-- The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 5, Funny) by DannyB on Monday September 14 2020, @03:36PM (6 children)
When I was young and started programming Pascal four decades ago I drank Coke for caffeine.
In 1984, I switched from regular coke to the newly introduced Diet Coke.
Everyone was afraid of the (then) new sweetener in it, which some said causes brain damage.
I said, if it does cause brain damage, we won't really know for twenty years!
Soon after 2004, which is twenty years later, I began programming in Java.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 14 2020, @07:56PM (5 children)
Well, to be fair to the Coca-Cola company, I think you were already showing signs of dementia decades before by choosing to program in Pascal. Just sayin'.
(Score: 3, Informative) by DannyB on Monday September 14 2020, @08:44PM (4 children)
Interesting.
But in designing our software system in 1980-81, for microcomputers there weren't a whole lot of other choices other than BASIC. Not only was Pascal far higher level than BASIC, the p-System in particular offered cross platform portability. The p-System also offered much greater code density on small microcomputers. p-Code was far more dense and high level than BASIC.
We wanted cross platform. So UCSD p-System [wikipedia.org] was our choice. It ran in the microcomputers we wanted (Apple II, Apple ///, IBM PC and Corvus Concept) but also ran on other systems that we had no current interest in (DEC PDP-11, Z80, 68000, TI 99/4a, others). Later, we did purchase a version of the p-System that ran on Macintosh with text screen, before we could develop the very first GUI version of our applications.
The p-System provided us (mostly) binary portability between systems. The Apple II and Apple /// both ran p-System version II, while other platforms ran version IV. But we had 100% source code compatibility.
And this was in 1981 and subsequent years.
At this point in time, you couldn't just buy an off the shelf database that was the same on all these different systems. So we rolled our own balanced 2 for 3 b-tree indexed file system. Later on when we ported to IBM PC I had to hand write x86 assembler because the ROM based screen functions were not fast enough nor sophisticated enough.
It is more than Pascal. But for the era I'm talking about, I"m not sure what you would actually be complaining about.
It was way ahead of its time. Cross platform binary compatibility like Java. And the same OS on all systems, with same utilities, linkers, compilers, assembler, etc, like Linux.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday September 14 2020, @08:56PM (3 children)
Just reminiscing. Our hardware requirements were pretty steep at that time. Between 128 K and 256 K bytes of memory. And a 10, 20 or 40 GB drive (costing about $5000 to $7000). Still a complete system, with our expensive software might run in the neighborhood of $10 K to $17 K depending on hardware and number of workstations, but was CHEAP compared to systems from IBM which might start at $35 K and go way up for multiple workstations. And that was in 1982 ish dollars.
Since the Apple II topped out at 48 K at that time, it was the first platform we dropped.
Years later, as IBM took over the PC world, we got a p-System that ran as an MS-DOS executable from a Canadian company Datalex. Not having to repartition the disk and dual boot for the p-System vs MS DOS was a good improvement. We gradually dropped other platforms by attrition.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Monday September 14 2020, @09:54PM (2 children)
The GB is a typo, right? Back when you were counting K bytes of memory, tape, floppies, and then MB drives were common.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 14 2020, @10:59PM
Always have a time machine handy. Be sure to bring a modern OS with you for reference and driver back porting.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday September 15 2020, @05:21PM
Yes. I meant MB. It is a typo.
Those were the days. Every byte and cpu cycle mattered.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.