The Trouble with Gerrold: Self-validating code
January 15, 2013 —
(Page 1 of 4)
At the beginning, it was called “microcomputing.” Enthusiasts were delighted at the idea that computing could finally be freed from the “priesthood.” Magazines like “Creative Computing” and "Byte” and “Kilobaud” foresaw a future when programming would be a skill as ubiquitous as reading, writing and long division.
Right. Nbdy duz lng div anymor & we all rite lk ths now.
The future refuses to cooperate with our predictions and forecasts. But aside from that, the early days of microcomputing were very exciting, because you could watch the first stages of evolution at work. There wasn’t a lot of software at the beginning. You had to write your own. So you went to the magazines to learn, and later on, CompuServe.
A useful article might explain why Quick Sort was better than Bubble Sort, comparing sort times, explaining the algorithm, and finally providing a sample code listing that you could adapt to your own use. Another article might do the same for hash tables. A third would walk you through string handling.
A lot of those early tutorials were linked to simple games like Hammurabi and Tic-Tac-Toe, so after you finished entering the code (learning as you went), you could play the game—and as you learned, you could add your own modifications. Eventually, “Creative Computing” showed how to write Colossal Cave Adventure in BASIC and store it all on two floppy disks, and that was the beginning of the text adventure explosion.
In those days, every manufacturer had their own implementation of BASIC, so listings often had to be translated. That meant learning familiarity with a lot of different dialects. When Turbo Pascal arrived, it unified a lot of software development, and because it compiled directly to a COM file, it was faster than interpreted BASIC, a very important advantage when you’re running at only 2MHz.
BASIC was notorious for resulting in spaghetti code. Turbo Pascal made it possible to write structured code. Although Pascal was originally intended as a learning language, Turbo Pascal was both an editor and a compiler. It was a powerful breakthrough for both hobbyists and professional programmers.
Related Search Term(s): debugging
Share this link: http://sdt.bz/37303