1755: Old Days - Revision history

FaviFake at 10:54, 29 July 2025

2025-07-29T10:54:16Z

FaviFake: added Category:Old Days using HotCat

2025-07-29T10:53:37Z

added Category:Old Days using HotCat

FaviFake at 17:55, 10 May 2025

2025-05-10T17:55:33Z

DKMell: minor fixes

2024-07-19T23:50:58Z

minor fixes

BunsenH: /* Explanation */ I have personal experience of programming via decks of cards sent to mainframes

2024-07-19T20:36:57Z

‎Explanation: I have personal experience of programming via decks of cards sent to mainframes

172.70.86.36: /* Explanation / Slightly corrected the addition. You could* just get films, and process the exposed ones yourself, but less dedicated everyday photographers were alured by the "You Press the Button, We Do the Rest" principle.

2024-05-08T15:30:46Z

‎Explanation: Slightly corrected the addition. You *could* just get films, and process the exposed ones yourself, but less dedicated everyday photographers were alured by the "You Press the Button, We Do the Rest" principle.

172.68.225.52: /* Explanation */

2024-05-08T11:47:55Z

‎Explanation

172.68.225.53: /* Explanation */

2024-05-08T11:47:04Z

‎Explanation

ChristmasGospel: Edit by ClassicalGames

2023-05-09T03:31:17Z

Edit by ClassicalGames

Graham87: /* Table of statements */ copyedit

2022-09-27T11:46:41Z

‎Table of statements: copyedit

@@ Line 8: / Line 8: @@
 ==Explanation==
-This comic shows a conversation between (young) [[Cueball]] and (old) [[Hairbun]] about computer programming in the past, specifically {{w|compilers}}. Cueball, having a faint idea of just how difficult and byzantine programming was "in the old days", asks Hairbun to enlighten him on the specifics. Hairbun promptly seizes the opportunity to screw with his head. This later became a [[:Category:Old Days|series]] when [[2324: Old Days 2]] was released more than 3½ years later. While her initial agreement that code needed to be compiled for multiple architectures is correct, Hairbun's claims rapidly grow ridiculous.
+This comic was followed 3 and a half years later by [[2324: Old Days 2]]. It shows a conversation between (young) [[Cueball]] and (old) [[Hairbun]] about computer programming in the past, specifically {{w|compilers}}. Cueball, having a faint idea of just how difficult and byzantine programming was "in the old days", asks Hairbun to enlighten him on the specifics. Hairbun promptly seizes the opportunity to screw with his head. While her initial agreement that code needed to be compiled for multiple architectures is correct, Hairbun's claims rapidly grow ridiculous.
 Hairbun tells Cueball a tall tale about how hard it was back in the '''old days''', making it sound like some of the programming languages used today (C, C++) were written on punch cards and that you had to ship your code in the mail to a computer company ({{w|IBM}} in this case) to compile your code, which would take from four to six weeks. If there was a simple error, you would have to ship it again for another compilation.

← Older revision		Revision as of 10:53, 29 July 2025
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		+	[[Category:Old Days]]

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 |-
 |Before garbage collection, data would pile up until the computer got full and you had to throw it away.
 |A {{w|Garbage collection (computer science)|garbage collector}} is a piece of the software that cleans the memory of data that is no longer being used in the execution of a program.
 |Garbage collection is a form of memory management that generally destroys objects or frees up memory once a program no longer needs it. In languages without automatic memory management, like C, the program itself must keep track of what memory has been allocated, and free it once it is no longer needed. If the program does not, it can end up trying to use more memory than the computer has, and may crash. This was, however, a ''temporary'' condition. In the worst case, a simple reboot will clear the computer's memory.
 |-
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 [[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
 [[Category:Comics featuring Hairbun]]
 [[Category:Comics sharing name|Old Days]]
 [[Category:Programming]]

@@ Line 8: / Line 8: @@
 ==Explanation==
-This comic shows a conversation between (young) [[Cueball]] and (old) [[Hairbun]] about computer programming in the past, specifically {{w|compilers}}. Cueball, having a faint idea of just how difficult and byzantine programming was "in the old days", asks Hairbun to enlighten him on the specifics. Hairbun promptly seizes the opportunity to screw with his head. This later became a [[:Category:Old Days|series]] when [[2324: Old Days 2]] was released more than 3 and a half years later. While her initial agreement that code needed to be compiled for multiple architectures is correct, Hairbun's claims rapidly grow ridiculous.
+This comic shows a conversation between (young) [[Cueball]] and (old) [[Hairbun]] about computer programming in the past, specifically {{w|compilers}}. Cueball, having a faint idea of just how difficult and byzantine programming was "in the old days", asks Hairbun to enlighten him on the specifics. Hairbun promptly seizes the opportunity to screw with his head. This later became a [[:Category:Old Days|series]] when [[2324: Old Days 2]] was released more than 3½ years later. While her initial agreement that code needed to be compiled for multiple architectures is correct, Hairbun's claims rapidly grow ridiculous.
 Hairbun tells Cueball a tall tale about how hard it was back in the '''old days''', making it sound like some of the programming languages used today (C, C++) were written on punch cards and that you had to ship your code in the mail to a computer company ({{w|IBM}} in this case) to compile your code, which would take from four to six weeks. If there was a simple error, you would have to ship it again for another compilation.
-This is, at best, an exaggeration, but is plausible to those who do not have the knowledge or context to challenge it, similar to a {{w|Snipe hunt}}, or several other cultural myths told about things like the {{w|Tooth Fairy}}. In some cases, decks of punched cards ''did'' have to be sent in to mainframe computers for processing, by people who didn't own their own machines. This wasn't generally the province of the computer ''manufacturers'', nor were the shipping times usually on the order of weeks, and professional programmers usually had better access to equipment. This can be contrasted with {{w|Kodak#The Kodak camera|Kodak's first mass-marketed cameras}}, in the 1890s. Owners were expected to send their cameras back to the Kodak company for technicians to take out the exposed film, develop it and print off copies, which would be sent back along with the reloaded camera, to simplify the process of film handling in the relatively new consumer market.
+This is, at best, a wild exaggeration, but is plausible to those who do not have the knowledge or context to challenge it, similar to a {{w|Snipe hunt}}, or several other cultural myths told about things like the {{w|Tooth Fairy}}. In some cases, decks of punched cards ''did'' have to be sent in to mainframe computers for processing, by people who didn't own their own machines. This wasn't generally the province of the computer ''manufacturers'', nor were the shipping times usually on the order of weeks, and professional programmers usually had better access to equipment. This can be contrasted with {{w|Kodak#The Kodak camera|Kodak's first mass-marketed cameras}}, in the 1890s. Owners were expected to send their cameras back to the Kodak company for technicians to take out the exposed film, develop it and print off copies, which would be sent back along with the reloaded camera, to simplify the process of film handling in the relatively new consumer market.
-It is clear from Cueball's final ''Wow'' that he falls for it. She then continues to explain more and more implausible so-called facts from the olden days.
+It is clear from Cueball's final ''Wow'' that he falls for it. Hairbun then continues to explain more and more implausible so-called facts from the olden days.
-What she says is true in that it was tough and slow to program on punch cards, which were actually used for an extended period of time. However, there is very little in the rest of Hairbun's story that is accurate, except that it was a big deal when the floppy disk was invented. The comment about punching holes in floppy disks is true. However, the nature and purpose of the holes punched this way was dramatically different than in punch cards. 5.25" and 3.5" floppy disks had holes or notches in them to indicate the data capacity and it was common to punch additional holes into cheaper, lower capacity floppy disks to trick the computer into writing more data on them than specified by the manufacturer. With punchcards on the other hand, the holes themselves encoded the data so punching them was itself the act of programming. It is unclear if this was a coincidence, or intentionally included as a humorous aside to the readers who know the history as a misinterpreted truth in a sea of falsehoods.
+What she says is true in that it was tough and slow to program on punch cards, which were actually used for an extended period of time. However, there is very little in the rest of Hairbun's story that is accurate, except that it was a big deal when the floppy disk was invented. The comment about punching holes in floppy disks is true. However, the nature and purpose of the holes punched this way was dramatically different than in punch cards. 5.25" and 3.5" floppy disks had holes or notches in them to indicate the data capacity and it was common to punch additional holes into cheaper, lower capacity floppy disks to trick the computer into writing more data on them than specified by the manufacturer. With punch cards, on the other hand, the holes themselves encoded the data so punching them was itself the act of programming. It is unclear if this was a coincidence, or intentionally included as a humorous aside to the readers who know the history as a misinterpreted truth in a sea of falsehoods.
 In the title text, Hairbun continues her musings on the old compiler days, stating that there was ''a lot of drama in those days''. Specifically she references ''[http://www.win.tue.nl/~aeb/linux/hh/thompson/trust.html Reflections on Trusting Trust]'' a famous 1984 paper by {{w|UNIX}} co-creator {{w|Ken Thompson}} in which he described a way to hide a virtually undetectable backdoor in the UNIX login code via a second backdoor in the C compiler. Using the technique in his paper, it would be impossible to discover the hacked login by examining the official source code for either the login or the compiler itself.  Ken Thompson may have actually included this backdoor in early versions of UNIX, undiscovered. Ken Thompson's paper demonstrated that it was functionally impossible to prove that any piece of software was fully trustworthy.
-Hairbun claims that one of the dramas she refers to was that people tried to force Ken Thompson to retire, so everyone could stop being so paranoid about compilers.  In reality, any coder who created the first version of a compiler (or a similar critical component) could inject a similar backdoor into software, so it would be false safety. Even if no one else had thought of this, then Thompson's paper was there for any future hacker to see. Though the problem was (claimed to be) solved in {{w|David A. Wheeler}}'s Ph.D dissertation "[http://dwheeler.com/trusting-trust/ Fully Countering Trusting Trust through Diverse Double-Compiling (DDC)]".
+Hairbun claims that one of the dramas she refers to was that people tried to force Ken Thompson to retire, so everyone could stop being so paranoid about compilers.  In reality, any coder who created the first version of a compiler (or a similar critical component) could inject a similar backdoor into software, so it would be false safety. Even if no one else had thought of this, Thompson's paper was there for any future hacker to see. However, the problem was (claimed to be) solved in {{w|David A. Wheeler}}'s Ph.D dissertation "[http://dwheeler.com/trusting-trust/ Fully Countering Trusting Trust through Diverse Double-Compiling (DDC)]".
 ==Table of statements==
@@ Line 51: / Line 51: @@
 |Punch cards were used through the late 1970s and early 1980s to enter programs and data in COBOL, FORTRAN and other early languages.  Punch cards and punch card machines were being replaced by magnetic storage and {{w|text editor|text editors}} by 1972, when C (or C++) was developed.  This site demonstrates a card punch and cards: [http://www.masswerk.at/keypunch/ Keypunch].
-Hairbun claims that code was not written using keyboards, but by punching out letter and character shapes in the punch cards, and the computer would read keystrokes that way. Simply put, this was never true. Punch cards store characters in binary; there is no font involved and they store up to fixed limit of characters per card (80 characters in the most common format.)
+Hairbun implies that code was not written using keyboards, but by punching out letter and character shapes in the punch cards, and the computer would read keystrokes that way. Simply put, this was never true. Punch cards store characters in binary; there is no font involved and they store up to a fixed number of characters per card (80 characters in the most common format.)
 |-
 |C++ was big because it supported floppy disks. It still punched holes in them, but it was a start.

@@ Line 12: / Line 12: @@
 Hairbun tells Cueball a tall tale about how hard it was back in the '''old days''', making it sound like some of the programming languages used today (C, C++) were written on punch cards and that you had to ship your code in the mail to a computer company ({{w|IBM}} in this case) to compile your code, which would take from four to six weeks. If there was a simple error, you would have to ship it again for another compilation.
-This is factually incorrect, but is plausible to those who do not have the knowledge or context to challenge it, similar to a {{w|Snipe hunt}}, or several other cultural myths told about things like the {{w|Tooth Fairy}}. (Much like when Kodak began selling their {{w|Kodak#The Kodak camera|first mass-marketed cameras}}, in the 1890s, owners were expected to send their cameras back to the company for technicians to take out the exposed film, develop it and print off copies, which would be sent back along with the reloaded camera, to simplify the process of film handling in the relatively new consumer market.)
+This is, at best, an exaggeration, but is plausible to those who do not have the knowledge or context to challenge it, similar to a {{w|Snipe hunt}}, or several other cultural myths told about things like the {{w|Tooth Fairy}}. In some cases, decks of punched cards ''did'' have to be sent in to mainframe computers for processing, by people who didn't own their own machines. This wasn't generally the province of the computer ''manufacturers'', nor were the shipping times usually on the order of weeks, and professional programmers usually had better access to equipment. This can be contrasted with {{w|Kodak#The Kodak camera|Kodak's first mass-marketed cameras}}, in the 1890s. Owners were expected to send their cameras back to the Kodak company for technicians to take out the exposed film, develop it and print off copies, which would be sent back along with the reloaded camera, to simplify the process of film handling in the relatively new consumer market.
 It is clear from Cueball's final ''Wow'' that he falls for it. She then continues to explain more and more implausible so-called facts from the olden days.

@@ Line 47: / Line 47: @@
 |C could only be written on punch cards. You had to pick a compact font, or you'd only fit a few characters per card.
 |{{w|C (programming language)|C}} is a programming language. A {{w|punch card}} is a early form of storing data; the pattern of holes and non-holes in a paper or cardboard card represented information.
-|Punch cards were used through the late 1970s and early 1980s to enter programs and data in COBOL, FORTRAN and other early languages.  The use of punch cards and punch card machines were being replaced by magnetic storage and {{w|text editor|text editors}} by 1972, when C (or C++) was developed.  This site demonstrates a card punch and cards: [http://www.masswerk.at/keypunch/ Keypunch].
+|Punch cards were used through the late 1970s and early 1980s to enter programs and data in COBOL, FORTRAN and other early languages.  Punch cards and punch card machines were being replaced by magnetic storage and {{w|text editor|text editors}} by 1972, when C (or C++) was developed.  This site demonstrates a card punch and cards: [http://www.masswerk.at/keypunch/ Keypunch].
 Hairbun claims that code was not written using keyboards, but by punching out letter and character shapes in the punch cards, and the computer would read keystrokes that way. Simply put, this was never true. Punch cards store characters in binary; there is no font involved and they store up to fixed limit of characters per card (80 characters in the most common format.)