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  hello comp.misc songbird <songbird@anthive.com> - 2014-11-09 15:38 -0500
    Re: hello comp.misc Oregonian Haruspex <bob_davis_retired@yahoo.com> - 2014-11-09 23:31 -0800
      Re: hello comp.misc songbird <songbird@anthive.com> - 2014-11-10 08:29 -0500
    Re: hello comp.misc RS Wood <rsw@therandymon.com> - 2014-11-10 11:43 +0000
      Re: hello comp.misc songbird <songbird@anthive.com> - 2014-11-10 08:30 -0500
      Re: hello comp.misc Bob Eager <news0002@eager.cx> - 2014-11-10 21:09 +0000

#5594 — hello comp.misc

  someone posted a note someplace else that i
stumbled across.  so i thought i would say hello.

  i've really enjoyed the old time stories posted by 
Rich.

  i'm probably a bit younger, in that i didn't start
computing until 1980ish, my first actual experience
was playing startrek on a teletype to a local
community college.  that was just a few moments, but
it was interesting and it got me curious.

  i knew i was going to college, but i really did not
know for what, my interests have always been varied, 
but a lot of interest in the life sciences.  i should
have gone into biology/botany, but one of the math
instructors was paying attention to how i solved 
problems and said that i should give computer science
a try...

  i did my time at the uni, i worked as a programmer
plus got a CS degree with both major and minor as 
CS, plus a year of grad school, but ran into trouble
(from taking all those CS and math classes i had a
very tight schedule, then the theory courses broke
my brain, i was just starting to finally figure it
out the third time through, but i still failed it and
so figured i was not cut out for CS grad school and
gave up).

  during the early programming years it was punch cards
and a batch system for the early coursework (UNIVAC and
EXEC 1100, still fondly remember the machine code of
that system as compared to what came later).  learned
how to use a terminal and to do editor macros and how
to run a remote batch station so we could check out
the batch station overnight or through the weekend.  for
work it was hacking our version of pascal, extending it
via the OS to do random disk IO to make a small database
for one of the departments.  we had a whopping 64K data,
and 64K instruction space and used overlays to get it
all to work.  it did work and it was my job through 
school until i finally got my degree...  i learned a lot
of things unofficially before i ever saw them in courses.

  after the degree i stuck around for a while, went through
a round of system's programming support for the mainframe
and then stuck through the conversion of that into a
minicomputer and all those years of custom programming by
many people being replaced by a packaged system supplied
by an outside vendor.  that was quite a change...

  once that was done it felt that it was time for a change.
the web was just starting up, but it didn't hold much
appeal to me for programming.  so for that and other
reasons i pretty much left technical programming behind
for many years.  i used C to write a few personal programs
but nothing has not caught my interest yet for furthering
what is now a hobby, up until a few years ago.

  then i picked up versions of rogue/rogomatic to fiddle
with (i'm still messing with them at times).  i love the
complexity, but there's some bugs that are still in there
to be tracked down, i may not ever figure them out...  it's
a hobby and a light one at that.  i picked it because i
liked playing rogue all those years ago and i never saw
rogomatic run, now it does run on my system, minus the
bugs it stumbles with at times.  an interesting approach
embedded within it (genetic programming), but it is hard
to see how that works over the scale i'm testing for most
of the time.  (if anyone would like to help out i'm happy
to share the issues i'm finding :) ).

  now, though, i'm at a point where i'd like to find some 
other project to work on that is actually useful.  finally,
i have a better connection so upload/download isn't horrible 
(that dialup line was a tough move after being used to DSL 
for a while and the uni connection which was also fast).

  i understand C somewhat, shell scripting somewhat, am
gradually learning python, and could probably still whip
up something in algol, snobol, cobol, pascal, fortran, awk,
lex, yacc, lisp, sql, etc.  i never really got stuck in 
any one language -- seems i never got far beyond functional 
programming.  OOP was just kicking off when i was fairly 
done.  in terms of the most lines of code written it would 
have to be Pascal, but that was ages ago, since then it has 
mostly been C or lisp and not really much lisp lately 
either.  shell scripts have been fun for playing with the 
rogue/rogomatic project (setting up a testing/debugging
environment and various things around that).

  during the summers i tend to be outdoors more and in the 
gardens.

  eek!  i guess that was a bit long.  i'm in a rambly mood 
today...  :)


  songbird

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#5597

On 2014-11-09 20:38:54 +0000, songbird said:

>   someone posted a note someplace else that i
> stumbled across.  so i thought i would say hello.

Yay!  Another person has taken refuge from the toil and drudgery of web 
forum sharecropping and found usenet.

Welcome.

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#5602

Oregonian Haruspex wrote:
> songbird said:
>
>>   someone posted a note someplace else that i
>> stumbled across.  so i thought i would say hello.
>
> Yay!  Another person has taken refuge from the toil and drudgery of web 
> forum sharecropping and found usenet.
>
> Welcome.

  :)  thanks!  actually, i've been reading usenet since 
the early 80s (when you could read the whole feed for
our site fairly quickly), but i don't think i posted
until some number of years later.

  i like the sense of people gathered around a favorite 
topic.


  songbird

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#5599

On Sun, 9 Nov 2014 15:38:54 -0500
songbird <songbird@anthive.com> wrote:

>   someone posted a note someplace else that i
> stumbled across.  so i thought i would say hello.
> 
>   i've really enjoyed the old time stories posted by 
> Rich.
> 
>   i'm probably a bit younger, in that i didn't start
> computing until 1980ish, my first actual experience
> was playing startrek on a teletype to a local
> community college.  that was just a few moments, but
> it was interesting and it got me curious.

Welcome!  Judging by your post you'd also probably enjoy
alt.folklore.computers, which is full of like-minded souls.

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#5601

RS Wood wrote:
...
> Welcome!  Judging by your post you'd also probably enjoy
> alt.folklore.computers, which is full of like-minded souls.

  :)  that will be a nice addition too, i'm there...


  songbird

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#5605

On Mon, 10 Nov 2014 11:43:29 +0000, RS Wood wrote:

> On Sun, 9 Nov 2014 15:38:54 -0500 songbird <songbird@anthive.com> wrote:
> 
>>   someone posted a note someplace else that i
>> stumbled across.  so i thought i would say hello.
>> 
>>   i've really enjoyed the old time stories posted by
>> Rich.
>> 
>>   i'm probably a bit younger, in that i didn't start
>> computing until 1980ish, my first actual experience was playing
>> startrek on a teletype to a local community college.  that was just a
>> few moments, but it was interesting and it got me curious.
> 
> Welcome!  Judging by your post you'd also probably enjoy
> alt.folklore.computers, which is full of like-minded souls.

I've just joined that too...!

(using Usenet since about 1983)
-- 
Using UNIX since v6 (1975)...

Use the BIG mirror service in the UK:
 http://www.mirrorservice.org

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