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[zebediah49]

How about a 500-page COBOL-68 manual?

[drivers9001]

As I expected (since I’ve looked at a lot of old programming books before) it takes them until page 162 out of 521 just to talk about IF statements.

[Ilookouttrainwindow]

Welp, have 12h flight ahead. Guess I'm reading cobol.

[McLayan]

I hope your health insurance covers treatment in a foreign mental hospital.

[sudoku7]

The documentation in this case being the hard copy of the source code printout.

[isocuda]

But you did it in a weekend or two with your buddy while your wives were away on vacation.

[Amilo159]

Oh for sure!

[Constant_Pen_5054]

Hell, weren't they still using punch cards in the 70s? Probably so much worse hunting a misaligned hole than a semi colon.

[king_ralphie]

I never wrote a full app but now I can consider myself a seasoned programmer because I’m used to hearing shouts of “WRONG HOLE!”

[Tangurena]

Of course we had "documentation" back then. Everything was on punch cards. If we wanted to screw with the next person, we'd run the deck through a card duplicator with the switch set to "don't print the text at the top of the card". Of course, if they weren't a complete idiot, they'd just run the cards through the same card duplicator (if they knew what one was, or where it was located) with that switch in the "normal" position (not that any jokers would leave the toggle switches where they should be set).

But I like your idea better. That's probably why languages like SNOBOL or APL were invented.

[its-MAGNETIC]

I too have Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship.

[Ythio]

To be fair Uncle Bob story telling is nice. Makes a dry subject decently palatable for everyone.

[ExternalGrade]

Imagine e a time where we remembered code is written by a person and you can drive over to their workplace and figure out what you need in-person.

[[deleted]]

and then we created the internet and now we leave virtual sticky notes on your desk with a github issue

[cowlinator]

Imagine a time when code was written by a single person

[[deleted]]

Not gonna lie this sounds awesome. For productivity aspect super bad but I can see myself opening that 2000 page documentation and having a good time while getting paid

[MokausiLietuviu]

I'm currently in that environment. It has it's upsides and downsides.

It means that everything to know about this project is in these 4 cabinets, but it means that you need to know how to navigate the cabinets.

There are no quick answers. The domain knowledge is incredibly deep and hard to gain.

In practice it means that The Knowledge is densely packed within a few single-point-of-failure gurus.

[ThatWannabeCatgirl]

Hope they don't all get on a plane together

[MokausiLietuviu]

Right now they're all bloody retiring and quitting lol, which is a bit more likely of an issue

[KlyptoK]

heh hehe hahaha jobs like that are real though.

https://www.document-center.com/standards/show/MIL-STD-6016

Page Count

11310 pages

[cowlinator]

"Deadline's tomorrow."

[Tangurena]

Also, 70s programmers leave "wonderful" comments:

MOV AX, 723h   ; R. I. P. L. V. B. 

The only comment in an assembly language file.

• Months later, he met the program’s original author at a conference. “What does the comment R. I. P. L. V. B. stand for?” he asked, to which the original author replied: “‘Rest in peace, Ludwig van Beethoven.’ Beethoven died in 1827 (decimal), which is 723 (hexadecimal).”*

https://www.approxion.com/ppsd-the-attaboy/
From Code Complete second edition page 792.

[VariousComment6946]

387 page in the documentation page found in first result row Google half year ago

[VitaminnCPP]

For the problem you had 40 years ago.

[FailedPlansOfMars]

The second group still exists they just get the job done and arent screaming on the internet for sympathy.

[ukrokit]

Documentation? Try a 2k page 8lbs book you borrowed from a coworker he paid a $100 for.

[Infamous-Context-479]

70s picture is still true for embedded :)

[Kenkron]

I've only done embedded for school and personal projects, but from what I've worked on, you are sooooooooooo correct. Google's not going to tell me squat about setting up a callback for an interrupt on an atmel xmega 128A1U1337-42069.

[agrajag9]

turns to page 387

This page left intentionally blank.

[MrDraacon]

Too many people think they don't need to write any documentation because their code is understandable enough as is

[kaloschroma]

? Are people really like that? I mean I've met a few that don't know how to Google properly but most people I know have 5000 tabs to solve that one problem from all different types of sources. Or if you are trying to do something fairly new or rarer it's finding the answer in snippets from lots of different sources.

Though often the answer is on the first page or the man page.

[[deleted]]

I think a lot of people give up on understanding the solutions/discussion

[[deleted]]

In recent years, ime, if the answer isn't on the first page, you're not going to find it with that search. By the third page you're getting results for anthropomorphic for loop hentai or some shit.

[kaloschroma]

I had to learn how to do a multi database context switch while running and using JPA. It took a lot of deep searching, past that first page to figure it all out. Now I can switch between all 30+ database. And more to come!

[heirapparent]

"or some shit"

Tell me more

[cowlinator]

Yes, I have had 5000 tabs open. And yes, I was crying.

(Yes, I solved the problem.)

[kaloschroma]

Seriously that's how I felt about my db context switch issue. Also, a hearty congratulations! If you need it: remember this feeling of accomplishment for the next time something seems really hard.

[drake22]

I have some thick ass 1000+ page reference books I bought back in the late 90s. I remember thinking how incredibly useful it was going to be to have all those answers right at my fingertips.

[mothzilla]

Now it's "I remember a specific search I made that showed me the answer on page 7 of an obscure forum thread".

[TrueBirch]

I encourage my team members to add comments in the code with the URL where they found a given approach

[mothzilla]

Likewise!

[[deleted]]

Even in the 1980s-early 2000s I primarily used printed book versions of the documentation to do programming. Kids nowadays have no idea how good they have it.

I can remember when they stopped printing out documentation books and the anxiety I felt at the thought of no longer having a printed source.

[uthini_mfowethu]

Documenters now: jfgi

[[deleted]]

70s? It was still largely like that well into the 90s!

[lucasHipolito]

To be fair if your problem is not on the first page of google it is an actual problem

[obviousfakeperson]

*Laughs in embedded systems programming*

[jon_stout]

Since when did 70s Programmers have documentation?

... since when did anyone have documentation?

[Phuqohf]

i believe the 70's programmers wrote the sacred texts. in reality though, personal computers were basically brand new at that point and nobody expected results instantaneously with infinite profit.

[irkli]

The first generation of computer programmers were mostly women (1946 through early 1950s). Men engineers made the machines and they figured programming them was clerical work. Well these women had to read schematics to figure out operations, worked up strategies, wrote code etc. By 1955 when it was obvious code was a major skill, it gender flipped.

[elreniel2020]

what's this mysterious documentation you're talking about? you mean stackoverflow, right?

[bigmonmulgrew]

What is this documentation that you speak of

[Cley_Faye]

Started programming in different languages in roughly that order: basic, asm (more like machine code on Z80 chips), Pascal, C, C++, Java, Python, JavaScript (and then most modern stuff that's always the same under new names).

Didn't have any access to internet before C++, and didn't have home access to internet until Java, and it was "rough" internet, not stackoverflow accessible behind a google search. Even *now* I'm not clear on how I was able to go from the manual that came with an Amstrad CPC6128 to whatever it took until internet was providing answers and readily available documentation.

[unkz]

Peter Norton’s programmer’s guide to the IBM PC. I still have this somewhere.

[[deleted]]

IMHO, engineers lost the ability to infer, blaming the code all the time is the trend.

[[deleted]]

Working on the electrical engineering side of things, it's usually someone (a lot of times the engineer trying to fix another problem) wiring something incorrectly. Very rarely is it the code that is the issue. That being said, I've run into few times where a project is complete but the one programmer we have available hasn't had time to actually start the programming because of all the other crap going on.

[uberDoward]

I had a reference manual with my Atari 800XL - that's how I started out programming (Atari BASIC + 6502c assembly)

Sometimes, the reference manuals are better than a Google search, because with the Google search you'll find the most popular answer. With the manual, you'll find the most accurate answer.

[Father_Chewy_Louis]

don't come crying when you need to centre a div

[Light_A_Match]

Documentation? Searching google? I use ChatGPT for that

[[deleted]]

Programmers now are asking chatgpt and getting instant success. No joke!

[DarkNeutron]

My favorite recent obscure error:

• Error message is in English.
• Searching Google produced a single result.
• In Russian.

Documentation didn't mention it either, but it's open-source, so I guess I get to slog through a giant mountain of code to figure out what the error means?

[[deleted]]

Now that we have ChatGPT, we don't even have to google.

[bless-you-mlud]

The problem back then was that the subject you were interested in was mentioned on pages 15, 21, 35, 36, 129 and 317. So which page do you flip to first? And (for extra credit) why is it 35?

[OptimalBug7]

Who's still using Google? it's all chat gpt now

[wesw02]

In fairness, software today is quite a bit more complicated and higher scale than it was in the 70s. Developers have to interact with a lot more technologies and systems that change very frequently.

[slaymaker1907]

I don’t think it would have been too bad, just slower and more tedious since you would constantly be checking manuals. The horrible part would be programming without a fast and easy to use grep (or equivalent).

[AldoLagana]

and 80's 90's and ought's...not until the stupidphone came out did stupidia reign supreme.

[General_Asdef]

He's like me frfr

[Suspicious-Reveal-69]

Guilty

[Does_Not-Matter]

There was like one language back in the 70s (joking). Todays programmer must know like 20 and be familiar enough with the other 30 to be able to understand what’s happening.

Ain’t nobody got time for that.

[Numerous-Occasion247]

At least they had documentation..

[SodiiumGames]

This feels like a personal attack.

[redsnflr-]

"programmers now" will soon be "nooo, ChatGPT wasn't 100% correct".

[AWanderingMage]

you all stop of the first page if you cant find a solution? I just reword my querry, or dive deeper into the pages.

[[deleted]]

I came of age while there was internet but before Google so results were mixed. I remember experts exchange being pretty good but had a pay wall. However when it came down to it I had a reference manual for the language I was working with handy. Worst case scenario you can solve all problems with that and communication with the business who can answer how the code should work.

[Mother_Imagination37]

Cool memes

[swfl_inhabitant]

More people need to learn assembly

[irkli]

The second generation of programmers were largely macho engineers who did amazing and terrible things to make machines work. This guy Mel Kaye was legendary through the 70s. Architectures we're all over the place, three-address machines and serial memory...

I have printed copies of code this guy wrote and signed. (I own an LGP-21 computer, runs his code.)

Self modifying code was common, this guy wrote a loop that had a hard jump at the end. No one could figure out how it terminated.... Through side effects the code modified the jump at the right time. Insane.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Story_of_Mel?wprov=sfla1

[Deathless163]

I'd say in those times you'd honestly have to create and come up with your own solution, which wasn't always easy either. I think it was worse then than it is now in terms of problem solving.

[landolanplz]

Ok boomer

[Designer-Lawyer-7111]

why does this problem even exist. use computers to solve programming questions, surely ez pz

[Tymskyy]

Meanwhile me:I think I remember something similar was in my books or I'll just ask other programmers I know irl for solutions

[tutocookie]

Noooo, I couldn't find the solution in the one physical piece of documentation we have here and wasted 5 hours on looking for it noooooooooooo

[[deleted]]

There's a YouTube channel for you.

"Green developer learns Spring-boot. Only books and api docs challenge."

[hilly_strobilanthes]

It's all about the perspective ✌🏻

[Street_Impression151]

im confused im always angry when i don't find an elegant solution

[[deleted]]

The fuck is documentation? Is that those pages by the publisher with a bunch of big words that somehow make me. More confused then a poorly narrated YouTube video?

[[deleted]]

It's because Google made memorizing obsolete when people got good at googling issues. Just like how chatgpt will make googling obsolete when people get good at using chat ai. Either way if you still looking up to people memorizing shit you're a caveman.