Ah, yes. I remember the days of Fortran 77 and Borland's Turbo C. Borland was a major break through in compilers and marketing. I saw Borland's first release of Turbo C in a bookstore for $100 - it also included 3 books in the package. At that time Fortran compliers were out of reach for most pc enthusiasts but Borland's marketing people "got it".
I still have a Toshiba laptop - Pentium 120. Won't run windows but no problem with Linux.
Oh I forgot, I still have the very first Pentium 90 PC that arrived in London at my company. As the manager in charge of the Divisional IT budget, I justified it as necessary for the Computer Support Team to keep abreast of the latest technology. Compared to our existing 386 and 486 machines it was blisteringly fast. When I retired many years later it was going in the skip, but I was allowed to take home as scrap.
Waiting for Godot & salvation :-)
Why do doctors have to practice?
You'd think they'd have got it right by now
@Magic : My apologies ! Both nerds and/or geeks : back then I think we were less distinct. IMHO there's a bit of one in the other anyhows.
Did a splattering of Fortran, Cobol, some Basic ( the non-visual sort ), some Pascal, yes some Turbo C, Microsoft MASM, and I accidentally fell into some DBase III once but I managed to get out again.
But C and then C++ have been my main joys. C++ is object oriented - which now means quite a few more things than it originally did - and forms a layer above pure procedural stuff. I've also done a slab of the web stuff : Javascript, PHP, HTML, CSS, SSI and related rubble. Python is OK, but I found Perl bizarre ( and I hear that isn't getting any better ). I evidently don't have the mind of a linguist. Java is cool and OOP for sure and runs 'anywhere', but just runs like a dead wombat, that being the price you pay for virtualising so much. Mind you they have wound that back a wee bit by writing APIs that perforate the layers.
FWIW : if you're going to learn C++ then definitely don't go via Stroustrup. Great guy etc, I have several of his neat books but you need to know C++ prior to reading them or you will lose the plot quick slick. For my money I'd go for anything written by Deitel & Deitel, and not just for C++.
The keen game in my time ( circa 1978 ) was just a text level to and fro called "Adventure". We played on a terminal coming off a PDP-11 at Uni. Which we got in trouble for doing. Well I say 'we', but it was my colleague in the Engineering Faculty with the account. So the Sword Of Damocles fell on him. The trick BTW is to "throw rabbit at dragon" at the crucial step, and then you win, as no one expects the dragon to explode at that point. :-)
Slightly later we got access to a prettier but still console driven version of StarTrek. Scanning, shooting photon torpedoes, it was all good. The 'maps' were formatted multi-line prints.
My room-mate at college had a kit computer - I forget exactly which one. Pretty lights and switches for input and output, but we learnt binary & hex real well with that. It was literally machine code. He left Uni after first year and was labelled a 'dropout'. However he went to the Shell corporation and gained a computing studentship with them. Get paid to learn while you work on their systems. I next saw him eight years later when he was their chief of IT guru-ness for this quadrant of the globe. By then he was making more money than a cow could crap, talk about getting on the lift at the ground floor ... :-) :-)
Cheers, Mike.
I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter ...
... and my other CPU is a Ryzen 5950X :-) Blaise Pascal
Ah, yes. I remember the days
Ah, yes. I remember the days of Fortran 77 and Borland's Turbo C. Borland was a major break through in compilers and marketing. I saw Borland's first release of Turbo C in a bookstore for $100 - it also included 3 books in the package. At that time Fortran compliers were out of reach for most pc enthusiasts but Borland's marketing people "got it".
I still have a Toshiba laptop - Pentium 120. Won't run windows but no problem with Linux.
Oh I forgot, I still have the
Oh I forgot, I still have the very first Pentium 90 PC that arrived in London at my company. As the manager in charge of the Divisional IT budget, I justified it as necessary for the Computer Support Team to keep abreast of the latest technology. Compared to our existing 386 and 486 machines it was blisteringly fast. When I retired many years later it was going in the skip, but I was allowed to take home as scrap.
Waiting for Godot & salvation :-)
Why do doctors have to practice?
You'd think they'd have got it right by now
Ah, Fortran, I passed that
Ah, Fortran, I passed that with an A too.
The last time, Eric and Ang gave me a ride home, the question about education came up. My answer to that was, Cookietaster got in the way of my BAs.
I winning, because I never regreted the trade off.
Pluto will always be a Planet to me.
It's all a degree of choice
It's all a degree of choice Uli :-)) Never did Fortran nor Cobol no point now they are yester-years stuff, might have a look at C++ sometime.
Waiting for Godot & salvation :-)
Why do doctors have to practice?
You'd think they'd have got it right by now
@Magic : My apologies ! Both
@Magic : My apologies ! Both nerds and/or geeks : back then I think we were less distinct. IMHO there's a bit of one in the other anyhows.
Did a splattering of Fortran, Cobol, some Basic ( the non-visual sort ), some Pascal, yes some Turbo C, Microsoft MASM, and I accidentally fell into some DBase III once but I managed to get out again.
But C and then C++ have been my main joys. C++ is object oriented - which now means quite a few more things than it originally did - and forms a layer above pure procedural stuff. I've also done a slab of the web stuff : Javascript, PHP, HTML, CSS, SSI and related rubble. Python is OK, but I found Perl bizarre ( and I hear that isn't getting any better ). I evidently don't have the mind of a linguist. Java is cool and OOP for sure and runs 'anywhere', but just runs like a dead wombat, that being the price you pay for virtualising so much. Mind you they have wound that back a wee bit by writing APIs that perforate the layers.
FWIW : if you're going to learn C++ then definitely don't go via Stroustrup. Great guy etc, I have several of his neat books but you need to know C++ prior to reading them or you will lose the plot quick slick. For my money I'd go for anything written by Deitel & Deitel, and not just for C++.
The keen game in my time ( circa 1978 ) was just a text level to and fro called "Adventure". We played on a terminal coming off a PDP-11 at Uni. Which we got in trouble for doing. Well I say 'we', but it was my colleague in the Engineering Faculty with the account. So the Sword Of Damocles fell on him. The trick BTW is to "throw rabbit at dragon" at the crucial step, and then you win, as no one expects the dragon to explode at that point. :-)
Slightly later we got access to a prettier but still console driven version of StarTrek. Scanning, shooting photon torpedoes, it was all good. The 'maps' were formatted multi-line prints.
My room-mate at college had a kit computer - I forget exactly which one. Pretty lights and switches for input and output, but we learnt binary & hex real well with that. It was literally machine code. He left Uni after first year and was labelled a 'dropout'. However he went to the Shell corporation and gained a computing studentship with them. Get paid to learn while you work on their systems. I next saw him eight years later when he was their chief of IT guru-ness for this quadrant of the globe. By then he was making more money than a cow could crap, talk about getting on the lift at the ground floor ... :-) :-)
Cheers, Mike.
I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter ...
... and my other CPU is a Ryzen 5950X :-) Blaise Pascal
Just winning!
Just winning!
RE: Earthquake: 3.9 Quake
@Timelord04
No wonder you woke up so early !
Bill
edit - Mornin Mikey.
*HAPPY NEW YEAR 2015*
*HAPPY NEW YEAR 2015*
ditto
ditto
RE: The keen game in my
Was that what we called Colossal cave?
Waiting for Godot & salvation :-)
Why do doctors have to practice?
You'd think they'd have got it right by now