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The IBM 029 Card Punch

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The IBM 029 Card Punch

Lines of code longer than 80 characters drive me crazy. I appreciate that this is pedantic. I’ve seen people on the internet make good arguments for why the 80-character limit ought to be respected even on our modern Retina-display screens, but those arguments hardly justify the visceral hatred I feel for even that one protruding 81st character.

There was once a golden era in which it was basically impossible to go over the 80-character limit. The 80-character limit was a physical reality, because there was no 81st column for an 81st character to fit in. Any programmers attempting to name a function something horrendously long and awful would discover, in a moment of delicious, slow-dawning horror, that there literally isn’t room for their whole declaration.
Map: Taylor Valley State Forest

Why hackers often don’t have internet at home 🖥

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Many computer hackers – that is people who write or hack together their own software don’t have internet at home. That might seem odd but actually that’s not uncommon as many hackers have a real aversion to technology or how it’s used for social control and advertising. Hackers, while benefiting from the internet as a source of knowledge often find things like social media and the internet a distraction from their work, so they are glad to keep their homes internet free.

Here’s How to Teach Yourself

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Learning to Code is Easy: Here’s How to Teach Yourself

Few skills scare people away like coding. Television portrayals make it seem like writing computer code is a genius-level activity, as weird symbols race across the screen and techno music blares in the background.

But the truth is that coding is actually pretty easy.

I’m not saying this to dismiss the work of brilliant programmers. A skill can simultaneously be fairly easy to get the basics in, while also being really difficult to master. Everyone learns to write, few people learn to write well. There’s no contradiction, therefore, in saying that basic literacy is an “easy” skill to acquire (in that the vast majority of us are able to do it), without dismissing the efforts of talented writers.

Macintosh SE with System 7.5.3

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Just a small video of my Apple Macintosh SE booting and running System 7.5.3. It has a 68000 8mhz CPU and 4MB ram.

With 4 MB of RAM you could extend the life quite a while with Mac OS all way through the release in 1996 of System 7.5.5.

Map: Rankin Pond

Comma Separated Fields (The GNU Awk User’s Guide)

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Comma Separated Fields (The GNU Awk User’s Guide)

For decades, anyone wishing to work with CSV files and awk had to “roll their own” solution. (For an example, see Defining Fields by Content). In 2023, Brian Kernighan decided to add CSV support to his version of awk. In order to keep up, gawk too provides the same support as his version. To use CSV data, invoke gawk with either of the -k or --csv options.

Fields in CSV files are separated by commas. In order to allow a comma to appear inside a field (i.e., as data), the field may be quoted by beginning and ending it with double quotes. In order to allow a double quote inside a field, the field must be quoted, and two double quotes represent an actual double quote. The double quote that starts a quoted field must be the first character after the comma. Table 4.1 shows some examples.

Glad I’m not dependent on technology

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I am kind of glad that I grew up in an era before modern technology. While it’s kind of neat that my two and a half years old niece can figure out how to call me over Duo (even though I lack the app), I’m kind of glad I’m not dependent on such technology.📵 It’s kind of nice not feeling like I have to have internet or television 📺 where I live but are quite happy with the solitude and doing what I need on the internet or bandwidth intensively either down at the public library or other public hotspot.📚

Along the banks of the James River