Reminiscing
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Comments posted to this topic are about the content posted at http://www.sqlservercentral.com/columnists/sjones/reminiscing.asp
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Wonderfull trip down the lane. Things have changed a lot and most have gotten better and yes some worse (bad programmers should be forced to rewrite their bad apps).
"Don't roll your eyes at me. I will tape them in place." (Teacher on Boston Public)
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If you haven't read this, it's interesting:
http://www.softwaremarketsolution.com/
from the maintainer of http://www.joelonsoftware.com
Steve Jones
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I'd just like to know how you posted this article on 5/23/02 when it's only 5/19/02 in Florida. I know we can't count votes correctly, but I thought we were allowed to stay on the same day of the week with everyone else. What time zone are you in? Or could this be (gasp) an error?
Student of SQL and Golf, Master of Neither
Student of SQL and Golf, Master of Neither -
How else can you look back except from the future :).
Actually it's not out on the site until the 23. The newsletter subscribers see it a little early, but there is no link from the home page yet.
Steve Jones
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.....and still have change from a ha'penny.
I started out my database work using a Commodore Pet, 6502 machine code and the original Commodore disk drive so I guess I pre-date Steve.
I've tripped through dBASE II, Clipper, Paradox, Foxpro, Smartware II, Lotus Approach, MS Access, HP IMAGE/3000 and eventually to SQL 6.5.
My 1st tests on SQL 7 were a revelation.
I had SQL6.5 running on a 400MHz PII and installed SQL7 on an old Pentium Pro of around 200MHz.
I used to have a data-warehousing job that ran on the 6.5 box thatused to complete, if I was lucky, in around 18 hours.
I test ran the same job on the 7 box and it was done in 1 hour!
The one observation I would make is that as software has got better the manuals have got worst or non-existant.
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Interesting. I vaguely remember the Pet. Was that before the Vic-20? I remember having one with a tape drive.
Manuals have definitely gotten worse, maybe because of the info available on the web.
Steve Jones
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The Commodore Pet predates the VIC20 by several years.
There is an original in the London Science Museum. I saw my 1st Pet in 1980 but I think it harks back to the late 70s.
It had a green 25x40 screen, a keyboard a bit like a cash register and a built in tape drive.
We used to play games on it (of course) such as Morlocs Tower (early RPG), which had a character called the "Creeping Crud".
Ah....happy days.
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You all make it sound all so warm and fuzzy! How about reviving the memories of all the horribly cryptic Microsoft bugs encountered over the years? }:) The pagers at 2am, all night debug sessions, weekends wasted fixing things that should have worked in the first place...on second thought, I'd rather forget too! 😉
BTW, nothing has changed in the last 10 years - it's still a buggy POS! 🙂 I'm ranting because I'm in the middle of another one of those wonderful undocumented features (i.e. bugs) of SQL Server! :(!
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Warm and Fuzzy!!!!!
That describes sales pitches and user specs.
It gives me a warm glow to remember that there is only so much to cock up in 256Kb RAM or a 360K floppy disk.
Does anyone remember "Fuzzy Logic"? I remember sitting in a lecture on PROLOG thinking that Fuzzy Logic was a close relation of "Wooly Thinking"
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Thanks for the flashback, Steve. I may not pre-date you but I'm close: my team supported Microsoft's corporate servers 'way back in the OS/2 days. (In case you're reading this, a big HEY goes out to Max, Cal, Seth, Anna and of course Judi. No, I haven't gotten hit by a truck yet...). I jumped in around 4.21 I believe. We had the dubious pleasure of upgrading ~300+ servers to NT from OS/2. Not to mention all the other nifty stuff - anybody remember SQL Bridge? ug. I suppose I could rattle on about being involved with the tlog shipping thing way back when but that long-gone nervous tic in my left eye is starting up just by dredging up these old memories...
Cheers,
Ken
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MainFrame, Digital, Altair, CPM, MPM, PC-DOS, MS-DOS, Win3.11, NT v3.5 ... and only a few grey hairs
RegardsRudy KomacsarSenior Database Administrator"Ave Caesar! - Morituri te salutamus."
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Let's see....
Hardware: Honeywell mainframe of unknown type, TRS-80 Model I, TRS-80, M-100 (I still have it and it still works!), Apple ][ etc., Original 128k Mac, Original 4-screw IBM PC, Original IBM AT with the self-destructing hard drive, up through Athlons.
OS: Dos 1.0 up through it becoming Win 3.0, still use cmd.exe daily. Mac OS (various). IBM JCL/s370.
Software: Lotus 1-2-3A*, dBase III (before the + showed up), a little dBase II, Lotus Symphony (BLECH!), various VisiWhatever, Samna Word, Microsoft Word 1.0, Multiplan, WordPerfect 4/5.
SQL Server 4.21a/6/6.5/7/2k, NT 3/3.5/4/2k/XP Pro/2003. 3Com 3+Share file servers, LanMan/OS2/NT...
TurboBasic/Pascal, QuickBasic/Pascal, Visual Basic 3/4/5.
GAG. I'm tired! 🙂
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[font="Arial"]Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves or we know where we can find information upon it. --Samuel Johnson[/font]
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