More that I can't remember posting - but I am going to post them together for the sake of wrapping up the folder in which they were all residing.
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This post gets a B. It's not awful, but it might be of no interest to some of you. If I had time, I would edit it. Feel free to skip it as it is entirely off-topic.
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This is an example of when I ask the BigHelpfulBrother a question -- and I get an answer where - technically, I can read all the words, but I have no idea what he is talking about.
He worked on computers back in the day of paper tape with holes punched into the tape - and maybe there are readers of the blog who did that too. If so, this is for you. If not -- just skip the whole thing as it will not be inspirational.
I had asked him about a secret Tetris that was buried somewhere in my laptop. I remember enjoying Tetris and have been trying to find a free version. If anyone knows of a free version, please share. The free version on the laptop is clunky - not like the original.
BHB's response:
Those are called 'Easter Eggs' and have been around since the beginning.
I never knew that these were buried in MacOS but I’m not surprised.
Why?
Distraction. Entertainment. Solving puzzles. Creating. To impress your nerdy friends.
I put one in a program once — the program that punched paper tape; the happy birthday one.
I was giddy from the time pressure on me and just had to do something entirely harmless — unless you count wasting 10 inches of paper tape — to make myself smile.
In an imbedded language switch [think speaking in English but inserting a paragraph in French] I checked my assigned job number and if that number was an exact multiple of 19 it would punch out “WOOF” . . . because the name I gave to the program was “Bowser: my pet program that chews paper tape”.
What I called it didn’t matter because it was just a called subroutine and would be named according to their software tracking plan.
I handed it over for testing — all the other subsystems were going to use it — and later asked what had happened. The guy told me they saw it but could never figure out what was happening.
I showed him how to kill it before they put it into production.
The tape is long and spells out the whole happy birthday song.
The image in the background is the Banksy artwork that *we* painted on their kitchen wall.
Loved the computer story. I was a programmer and thought paper tape was going to be the wave of the future 😺
ReplyDeleteBHB here: I wrote that program in the fall of 1976. At that point in time all computers were the size of several refrigerators and what was to become today's internet was a handful of university computers in California, connected by phone lines that frequently lost communications. The Cold War was on, the Berlin Wall stood, and we were facing down the Russkies. The paper tape was part of an "email" system that worked as follows: a person used a terminal to write a message which was punched on paper tape which was fed to a World War II vintage teletype (using dedicated phone wires) which sent the message to the destination site where a copy of the first paper tape was punched out and fed to a computer which read it and directed the message to the correct mailbox. The messages were supposed to order fighter, bomber, and tanker missions. I designed the whole system, including the Bowser routine, and the code (COBOL) was written by another guy, except for Bowser: that was the only COBOL program I ever wrote. The system barely worked because the wind blowing the telegraph wires would cause data errors. I left the AF six months later.
ReplyDeleteI absolutely loved this post! I would give it an A+ for interest and pure genius of BHB. I am a midwife, nothing to do with coding or acomputer's inside bits!! Barb (New Zealand)
ReplyDeleteI found this very interesting and amusing (Woof!). I am absolutely floored by your "Banksy" - that is some gorgeous work!
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