Docstrings considered too complicated

[Rhodri James]

On Wed, 03 Mar 2010 19:38:16 -0000, Steve Holden <steve at holdenweb.com>  
wrote:

> mk wrote:
>> D'Arcy J.M. Cain wrote:
>>
>>> Makes me want to go down to the basement and fire up the Altair.  :-)
>>
>> Please don't, or else I fire up that univ Yugoslavian copy of VAX with
>> Pascal compiler (where I wrote my first program) and I will start my
>> first program of ping-pong.
>>
>> It was a few hundred lines but took 5 minutes to compile; "VAX" was
>> theoretically multitasking, but when more than 3 people were trying to
>> do smth on it simultaneously, it was basically seizing up.
>>
>> Regards,
>> mk
>>
> Puts me in mind of Mario Wolczko's early attempts to implement SmallTalk
> on a VAX 11/750. The only bitmapped display we had available was a Three
> Rivers PERQ, connected by a 9600bps serial line. We left it running at
> seven o'clock one evening, and by nine am the next day it had brought up
> about two thirds of the initial VM loader screen ...
>
> You tell these young kids, and they just don't believe you!

There's old, and then there's old.  http://sms.cam.ac.uk/media/739532 is a  
film of EDSAC being programmed in 1951, with a commentary added by Maurice  
Wilkes in 1976.  Maybe just a bit before my time (by a decade or so :-)

-- 
Rhodri James *-* Wildebeeste Herder to the Masses