Musings on Ancient Computing

[andybob (Andrew Cox)]

@ezman

The original poster wanted a guarantee that any work he does will be good 20 years from now. If, as he states, he has things from 30 years ago that he still uses, then it’s not software.

Not quite true: I recently recovered some code I wrote at university in 1981 from a 1/2 track DEC tape. I’d run it if I could find a free PL/I compiler… That code was originally written on punch cards and run on an IBM System/360. To my dismay, the music catalog program I wrote, and the metadata I put on punch cards, was not on this tape. If it was, I could honestly say that the music metadata I started to capture in 1979 or so was still available and usable today in its original form. In fact I still have it, as I’ve migrated that data from punch cards to a hierarchical database to a flat file manager to Oracle to Access and on.

On the other hand, the work the OP put into his metadata stands a much better chance of existing in a usable form 20 years from now than my stuff did nearly 40 years ago. As roon takes on new corporate form in the future, his data will live on in some AWS S3 backup such even after he’s gone too.

Like some others, I would like to preserve work I do in roon outside roon as far as possible. If tags are insufficiently expressive, roon could export non-licensed data to sidecar files at the album or group or some higher level. Or they could publish their datastore specs or provide an API to developers to extract it and migrate it. But as @brian said in his first post, export needs to be more complete. In his second post, he argued for getting this right as opposed to doing it soon. As he noted, most users do extremely little metadata editing. And those that do find it cumbersome, as I have. My strategy so far has been to go back to other tools to fix data at the source if roon can’t figure something out and then re-import. If only the editing wasn’t buried behind so many clicks. At this point in the product’s life, it shows that these are secondary considerations. If roon ever provides full and efficient metadata editing, the product will need a different UI for it. Expert mode? Arg, please shoot me for saying that.

Thanks,

• Eric

Quoting to open new thread.

[xxx (Banned - toxicity)]

A bouquet of flowers to the Roon development team

I recently recovered some code I wrote at university in 1981

So, it’s to be war stories, is it? When I started work in 1978, all my programs were also on card decks. I worked on a Univac 494, a base 8 machine, and I can guarantee that those programs can no longer be run.

[Geoff_Coupe]

Pah - I used an IBM 1130 at university back in 1969, and wrote a poetry-generating program in Fortran on punched cards. Thankfully, no trace of it remains…

[ezman]

I should bow out, 1969 wins. We didn’t have computers in elementary school back then.

But… learning basic using mark sense cards in junior high math class in 1972? Coding PL/I on green coding forms that went to the school district’s keypunch pool and then run, getting the output the next week?

How about the oldest machine? I worked on an antique Raytheon machine once. You started it up by entering some boot code using toggle switches, watching progress in binary on Nixie tubes, then fed it programs on paper tape that were stored on a huge drum device with a few K of storage. I wasn’t into audio at the time, so I didn’t think to check if it was built from tube flipflops. Being the size of a couple of refrigerators it was probably too small for that.

We used to hack the keypunch control cards in the university’s keypunch room to ensnare the unwary.

Now I can deploy a service to fleets of hosts in datacenters around the world by clicking a button on a webpage and impact millions of customers. What a journey!

Thanks,

• Eric

[xxx (Banned - toxicity)]

A bouquet of flowers to the Roon development team

program in Fortran

Bah - A high level language. I, like all real programmers, programmed in assembler.

[Geoff_Coupe]

I was taking a degree in Electronic Engineering - I didn’t want to be a real programmer…

[andybob (Andrew Cox)]

My Dad was an Industrial Chemist, I’ve still got his slide rule.

My earliest forays into computing were with a dual cassette (I know, right, the sheer unbridled power !) micro type circa 1978 but I left it alone for a few years and came back to it with the Amiga in the 80s. Learned C (still have my K&R) and did some Pascal. Never touched assembler.

Dad gave me some Honeywell comic calendars when I was young, and I remember being quite bemused by the terrible consequences that folding, mutilating or spindling could lead to.

[ezman]

Tech comics? Here’s the second version of the greatest hoax, the retroencabulator:

[Tony_Reimann]

Me too! The only language for proper coders. And I used PIOCS rather than LIOCS.

[xxx (Banned - toxicity)]

Now seems like a good time/place to ask, “What the hell is your avatar?”. I’ve tried several times and can’t make it out.

[xxx (Banned - toxicity)]

And I used PIOCS rather than LIOCS

I suspect these things are way after my time. I googled and didn’t get an answer. In short, what are they?

[RBM (René)]

Take a long, hard look at the avatars of Roon staff around here, click on @andybob’s profile so the icon enlarges and suddenly it all makes sense…

[xxx (Banned - toxicity)]

You, I understand, it’s Magritte. All I can see on the other is that it’s a jellyfish on its side, because the Roon icon sort of looks like a jellyfish? OKay.

[xxx (Banned - toxicity)]

’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

[andybob (Andrew Cox)]

I’m not saying fake jellyfish don’t have their place. Some people might be quite content with synthetic jellyfish, and the world needs people like that, bless their hearts. It’s just a question of what you’re prepared to settle for really.

[orgel (David Orgel)]

Real jellyfish are way more analog.

[Tony_Reimann]

Physical Input Output Control System rather than Logical Input Output Control System. Basically writing your own channel programs to interface with the hardware devices rather than making calls to the OS to do so. I worked as a Systems Programmer on IBM mainframe systems from about 1977 to 1990 when I moved totally into management roles. TBH I enjoyed my techie days most.

[xxx (Banned - toxicity)]

TBH I enjoyed my techie days most

Couldn’t agree more I had to follow the same career path. I hugged the machine for 15 years, but I never heard of PIOCS etc. Are you English/European, maybe that’s why it’s different buzz phrases?

Oh well, enough nostalgia for me.

[Tony_Reimann]

I am from New Zealand although I spent ten years working in London. See here for some info

[xxx (Banned - toxicity)]

OK, System 360 was a little before my time. That would be before MVS which is where I started. System 360 was before relocatable loaders and multitasking, and you had to tell at link time whether you were going to run in the upper or lower partition, right? That’s what I learned on. Long time ago.

Really in the weeds here.