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Sorry, Older Programmers – What's on Your Mind Today?

1 points by kamfc ↗ HN
Today, I woke up sympathizing with older people for their contribution in science while people like me take for granted the hours of sweat, blood, and divorces it took to lay the foundation for the 21st Century. You risked so much for millennial. You are my heroes regardless of the accolades you received or didn't because you participated in transforming the world.

Sorry, older programmers, what's on your mind today? I want to listen to you talk about life such as thoughts on the industry, pet peeves, or your ex-girlfriend Summer.

2 comments

[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 11.1 ms ] thread
simonblack
Depends.
simonblack
That was a (very old) joke, of course.

Actually, being away from 'have to' programming (work-related) means we can go back to our 'hobbyist' programming (stuff we enjoy) and do lots of entertaining things that don't need to satisfy anybody else but ourselves.

Who cares if we happen to spend weeks poring over 30-year old technical manuals or diagrams to emulate in software a floppy-disk controller card that hasn't been manufactured since 1981. I did that a little while back. When integrated into an emulated machine and paired with a floppy-disk boot-image from that era I got this:

     64K Graphics CP/M 2.2  rev 1.2.0 for Advantage HQ from North Star Computers,Inc.

     
     Hard Disk Boot In-Process
     To review connections, enter Semicolon (;) within a second or two
 
     No ; entered, so proceeding with prior connections
     A>DIR
     A: --VDISK- AAA : -CPM120- WM- : PIP      COM : XSUB     COM
     A: ED       COM : ASM      COM : DDT      COM : LOAD     COM
     A: STAT     COM : DUMP     COM : ONECOPY  COM : SUBMIT   COM
     A: DIRDUMP  COM : COLDBOOT COM : HDOFF    COM : DUMP     ASM
     A: DIRDUMP  ASM : FORMAT   COM : COPY     COM : SYSGEN   COM
     A: GMGRADD  COM : LOCAL    COM : USER     ASM : HDBOOT   COM
     A: GDDT     COM : FILLDISK COM : XDIR     COM : WS       COM
     A: SERIALZ  COM : WSMSGS   OVR : WSOVLY1  OVR : CPMGEN   COM
     A: FRED     C