Comment by teamsolid
16 hours ago
It is wonderful how early years of modern computing was brilliant. We treated machines as they really are: machines. Performance, creativity, science..., all possible to make a 386 machine work. Nowadays is all about libraries, virtualization, [bad] code over [bad] code over [bad] code..., I dont like it.
I sometimes think that my mental model of a computer is still an Apple ][+ with 48K of RAM leads to my writing better code.
While I did a few 10 line programs in BASIC in high school on punch cards, when things really started was a freshman class on semiconductors. The class started with diodes and quantum mechanics, then onto transistors, then flip flops, then registers, then ALUs. Then it was on to designing/building a digital clock (which never worked right), and later designing/building/programming single board computers (6802 chip).
It was fun knowing everything about a computer. That's long gone!
And mine is a Commodore Vic-20 circa 1981, with 3583 bytes of free RAM. Programmed in 6502 assembler. Can't get much closer to the CPU than that.
For a very long while now, we had programmers who never understood any low level concepts at all. They have started with js or python, and never looked 'down'. There are no limits to monstrosities they will consider normal.
Linus Torvalds, a few months ago, said something to this effect when discussing AI coding tools. That his (also, mine) generation was lucky to have started with low level stuff and managed to retain the understanding of the whole stack - and kids these days don't get that. Good luck acquiring this level of feel for computers, algorithms, data structures today, when a kid's first experience with coding will be a seemingly genius chatbot.
>and managed to retain the understanding of the whole stack
No one understands the whole stack. There is too much specialized information.
Even assembly is a high-level language relative to what’s actually going on inside a modern CPU.
DOS and brilliant in the same sentence...