McGuire:
Yeah, that's one part of history that I do NOT miss. I do a good bit of assembler these days and just wouldn't be able to stay sane with five-character identifier names.
Ach, you kids have it so easy with your long filenames, subdirectories and long identifiers! Working with limitations is part of computer HISTORY (and being re-discovered by embedded programmers) - 5 character filenames & labels on the 1130 - 8.3 filenames on CP/M and DOS - 14 character filenames on early Unix file systems (16 byte directory entry: 2 byte inode #, 14 byte name). Other machines and operating systems had their own restrictions, such as radix-50 for six characters into one 36-bit word https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DEC_Radix-50 Neil Cherry:
and I think Python is used for that now (good language though the indentation brings me back to my Assembly Language days, yes with 4 char labels).
Indentation? 4 character labels? WHAT A LUXURY! I started with EDU-25 BASIC: ONE character names and line NUMBERS! FORTRAN was a step-up with longer variable names and line numbers only where needed! Bob Flanders:
And don't use no big words I can't understand.
That's why old systems were better! No long names or words allowed! I never liked William F. Buckley because I needed a dictionary to look up everything he said :-/ Roganti:
I read that some acronyms we were so accustomed to were actually backronyms
Some were intentional, such as XINU (Xinu Is Not Unix), others were to cover up an "in joke" when something was named, particularly when using naughty words (SNAFU, FUBAR).