[vcf-midatlantic] What we can learn from vintage computing

[Dean Notarnicola]

This exactly. The best programmers I've known are the ones that had a good
understanding of the underlying architecture, regardless of whether they
are doing end-user applications or system software.

On Wed, Dec 14, 2022 at 9:44 AM Neil Cherry via vcf-midatlantic <
vcf-midatlantic at lists.vcfed.org> wrote:

> On 12/14/22 08:51, Jonathan Chapman via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
> >> This is from a programmer's point of view but still interesting reading
> >>
> >> https://github.com/readme/featured/vintage-computing
> >
> > Decent article! There's absolutely value in learning this old stuff. I
> still maintain that hacking on old computers at the architecture/machine
> code/asm level gave me a distinct advantage over "academically stronger"
> (better at memorizing, mostly) folks in college.
> >
> > I don't know if they're still doing it, but at some point in talking
> with folks at the MIT Flea, someone had related that MIT was still offering
> either a comp arch or comp org type of course using the PDP-11. This was
> some time between 2010 and 2015. Like the article says, before a point it's
> possible to understand all parts of a whole system.
> >
> > Thanks,
> > Jonathan
>
> I really can't imagine how hard it would be to pick up something like
> Software defined networks and try to understand it without knowing
> the basics of networking and the OSI stack.
>
> Same here, learned a lot from Don Lancaster's articles on the Apple
> II (amazingly simple, complex machine). That and my electronics
> and I'm now reverse engineering the Liebert controller for a CDL
> project. Got Motorola Lilbug assembled last night. Need to make a
> few tweeks to the code.
>
> Learning a simple architecture made it possible to understand what
> the asm code was doing and how it worked with the electronics. And
> while I can pretty much identify what todays chips are and what a
> board can do so much of it is hidden inside the system on a chip
> or worse FPGA.
>
> Everything is built on the basics.
>
> --
> Linux Home Automation         Neil Cherry       kd2zrq at linuxha.com
> http://www.linuxha.com/                         Main site
> http://linuxha.blogspot.com/                    My HA Blog
> Author of:      Linux Smart Homes For Dummies   KD2ZRQ
>
>