boys v girls - Part 2

[MarkFL]

271 ... I remember those days, and using floppy discs for installation.

270 - Yes, sometimes a dozen or more...and a huge tome of a manual too.

 

[tango]

270 - Yes, sometimes a dozen or more...and a huge tome of a manual too.

A dozen? I remember when Windows NT 3.5 came out on something like 24 floppies. The nice man at Microsoft said that users would only tolerate so many floppies. Then Windows NT 3.51 appeared on twice as many floppies.

Our first installation of NT was a farce, we had something like three copies of it and every single one failed on disk 9. The error was really helpful - "contact your administrator". So I called Microsoft to see if they'd at least give me a clue what the problem was, and they said to contact the system administrator. When I told them I was the system administrator trying to get their OS to install they deigned to talk to me, and concluded we had a bad disk.

The beginning of the end of sensible coding, when efficiency shifted from a critical strategy to something nobody could be bothered with any more. I remember when it was critical to check for available disk space before attempting a disk write operation, now it seems the assumption is that you just buy a bigger hard drive.


269

 

[MarkFL]

A dozen? I remember when Windows NT 3.5 came out on something like 24 floppies. The nice man at Microsoft said that users would only tolerate so many floppies. Then Windows NT 3.51 appeared on twice as many floppies.

Our first installation of NT was a farce, we had something like three copies of it and every single one failed on disk 9. The error was really helpful - "contact your administrator". So I called Microsoft to see if they'd at least give me a clue what the problem was, and they said to contact the system administrator. When I told them I was the system administrator trying to get their OS to install they deigned to talk to me, and concluded we had a bad disk.

The beginning of the end of sensible coding, when efficiency shifted from a critical strategy to something nobody could be bothered with any more. I remember when it was critical to check for available disk space before attempting a disk write operation, now it seems the assumption is that you just buy a bigger hard drive.


269

268

I remember when Windows 1.0 first came out...I thought "cute" but this will never catch on...the command line interface is just too powerful.

 

[tango]

268

I remember when Windows 1.0 first came out...I thought "cute" but this will never catch on...the command line interface is just too powerful.

267

I remember Windoze 3 and hating just about everything about it. I remember a conversation with someone who couldn't understand why I didn't multitask with Windows, but I figured if I just did Job A and then did Job B the total time would be A+B whereas if I did little bits of them interspersed more often than not I'd end up spending A+B+x, where x was the amount of time lost by endlessly shifting my mindset from one job to the other and remembering how far I'd got.

Even now multitasking seems to be little more than a fancy word for browsing faceache while waiting for code to compile, which seems to have a depressing tendency to actually mean browsing faceache while useful tasks languish unloved in the background.

 

[MarkFL]

267

I remember Windoze 3 and hating just about everything about it. I remember a conversation with someone who couldn't understand why I didn't multitask with Windows, but I figured if I just did Job A and then did Job B the total time would be A+B whereas if I did little bits of them interspersed more often than not I'd end up spending A+B+x, where x was the amount of time lost by endlessly shifting my mindset from one job to the other and remembering how far I'd got.

Even now multitasking seems to be little more than a fancy word for browsing faceache while waiting for code to compile, which seems to have a depressing tendency to actually mean browsing faceache while useful tasks languish unloved in the background.

266

Yeah, I am more of a linear thinker too, I get more focus that way.

 

[tango]

266

Yeah, I am more of a linear thinker too, I get more focus that way.

265 - I do remember one place I worked where some of the other techie guys struggled to see how I could switch between windows and code in three different languages so seamlessly. But then they weren't really coders, they did system modelling. The biggest issue I had was remembering semicolons - Delphi needs them and VB doesn't want them.

 

[MarkFL]

265 - I do remember one place I worked where some of the other techie guys struggled to see how I could switch between windows and code in three different languages so seamlessly. But then they weren't really coders, they did system modelling. The biggest issue I had was remembering semicolons - Delphi needs them and VB doesn't want them.

264 - My fiancee is a very talented algebraist, and no matter how much I try to convince her that coding requires no more brain power than mathematics, she looks at my code and declares it is just all Greek to her...and she speaks 6 languages so I would think she would understand it's simply a matter of linguistics.

 

[rivulet]

I was going to chime in but it appears that the ladies have lost

 

[MoreCoffee]

264 - My fiancee is a very talented algebraist, and no matter how much I try to convince her that coding requires no more brain power than mathematics, she looks at my code and declares it is just all Greek to her...and she speaks 6 languages so I would think she would understand it's simply a matter of linguistics.

I was going to chime in but it appears that the ladies have lost

263 :stars:

Hi rivulet :cheer2::cheer2::cheer2:

 

[MarkFL]

263 :stars:

Hi rivulet :cheer2::cheer2::cheer2:

262

Hello rivulet! While the guys have won previously, the girls can still win the current game.

 

[tango]

261

 

[MarkFL]

261

260

 

[rivulet]

262

Hello rivulet! While the guys have won previously, the girls can still win the current game.

Yeah, but What number are the girls on... Should we just start at 1 and work our way up from there?

 

[MarkFL]

Yeah, but What number are the girls on... Should we just start at 1 and work our way up from there?

Each gender uses the last number posted as a reference. If you are female, you add 1 to the last number and post the resulting sum, and if you are male you subtract 1 and post the resulting difference.

For example, the last number posted was 260...you would then post 261, while a male would post 259. Another rule is that no one can post consecutively.

I recommend quoting the post containing the last number for clarity. If the females can get the number of to 1,000 they win, whereas if the males can get the number down to 0, then we win. The game always begins with 500.

 

[tango]

260

259

 

[MarkFL]

259

258

 

[tango]

258

257... and we remain a resolutely female free game...

 

[MarkFL]

257... and we remain a resolutely female free game...

256 - It's truly a sad state of affairs.

 

[tango]

256 - It's truly a sad state of affairs.

255, back into 8-bit numbers again ...

 

[MarkFL]

255, back into 8-bit numbers again ...

254 - 8 bits in a byte, and 8 bits in a dollar...coincidence?