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Top-level
 @hu_logic @dyslexxicon @rodhilton Ask anyone who has worked on govt. projects about how "bleeding edge" the tech stack generally is. I'm sure there is some scarily advanced stuff in the deepest depths of Langley or Ft. Meade, but the people working on it won't talk about it. If someone has a govt. job on their resume, they probably have held together systems written in a mix of VBA, COBOL, and Frontpage. /1 26 comments
@LizardSF @hu_logic @dyslexxicon @rodhilton though you do get some good software in that space that you can look at https://github.com/alphagov @LizardSF @hu_logic @dyslexxicon @rodhilton until not so long ago, the master key for the mainframe crypto cards had to be kept in three 3,5 floppy disks, handled by three different people (who should not know each other) in different safes. @jguillaumes @LizardSF @dyslexxicon @rodhilton that is kinda cool and absolutely terrifying at the same time... @LizardSF @hu_logic @dyslexxicon @rodhilton My mom was a computer operator for a large bakery and all she did was every 4 hours save a file from the as400 to a floppy, type some command and then move floppy to the Univac (or whatever). She did that for *years*. @gretared @LizardSF @hu_logic @rodhilton and here I thought working with shitty DOS installers on some even shittier HP thin clients was archaic work for the time I was doing it (seriously, Guitar Center could afford better for their retail tech). That's borderline using punch cards.  @gretared @LizardSF @hu_logic @dyslexxicon @rodhilton huh, I had a temp job printing out and manually collating delivery schedules on an AIX for a bakery about 20 years ago. @LizardSF @hu_logic @rodhilton I recently found an old floppy disk from when I went to a tech class in my community college times. That was when thumbdrives were still becoming a Thing™ and it cost, like $30 for a 1GB thumb drive. @LizardSF @hu_logic @rodhilton also 8 inch floppies that recently. Le yikes... 👀 @dyslexxicon @hu_logic @rodhilton @LizardSF @hu_logic @dyslexxicon @rodhilton ...plaintext, length-delimited files in a mix of IBM-specific encodings, some of which presuming the existence of decimal fixed point hardware? Because I seem to be having flashbacks to my time in the wonderful world of finance @eseilt @LizardSF @hu_logic @dyslexxicon @rodhilton EBCDIC anybody? Those were the days. 😀 @ericsfraga @eseilt @hu_logic @dyslexxicon @rodhilton That, at least, is before my time. :) But just. @LizardSF @ericsfraga @eseilt @hu_logic @dyslexxicon @rodhilton I’m planning a “training day” in the new year in which the Swift and Kotlin devs are going to learn some COBOL. Such that we might be able to understand what’s really going on at our bank. @sam @LizardSF @ericsfraga @eseilt @dyslexxicon @rodhilton I am ... so sorry... @sam @LizardSF @eseilt @hu_logic @dyslexxicon @rodhilton Ah, COBOL. Still with us but mostly invisible. https://fosstodon.org/@amoroso/109552603108209911 @LizardSF @dyslexxicon @rodhilton Frontpage, thanks for making me feel old... @hu_logic @dyslexxicon @rodhilton My first web coding was using PERL, written in a text editor, and stored in cgi-bin. :) @LizardSF @hu_logic @dyslexxicon @rodhilton mine too, just using fastcgi... in 2012... @LizardSF @hu_logic @dyslexxicon @rodhilton I worked on an avionics system about a decade ago. PCMCIA cards, CDs (in 2012! Also the system is definitely still in service!). All our software was written in C89 for *reasons*. @LizardSF @hu_logic @dyslexxicon @rodhilton Fortran. We’d run Alpha Micros & back up to a washing machine sized Winchester device while archiving to VHS. Wish everyone a great holiday season. @LizardSF @hu_logic @dyslexxicon @rodhilton I do miss having an entire software application fit into a single 3.5” floppy. Simple days. And not-so-simple days: I also remember software getting “so” big you needed to swap half a dozen of those in and out to install a single software app. #FloppyDisk @jnskm @hu_logic @dyslexxicon @rodhilton The original Mac OS had the OS, the Finder, MacPaint, and MacWrite on a 400K floppy and running in 128K or RAM. Bill Atkinson was a genius. (Having a lot of the GUI in ROM also helped; it's why the Mac was much slicker to use, relative to hardware speed, than equivalent x86 systems running GUIs until probably the late 90s.) |
Gregory's Server
@hu_logic @dyslexxicon @rodhilton My prior job, until 2019, was with a bank that dealt with tax return processing. They had to maintain a 5.25 floppy disk for some requirements until about 2017 or so, and the data we got was mostly plaintext, length-delimited files.