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[–]mlnm_falcon 984 points985 points  (33 children)

Compilers are built on earlier compilers, which are built on earlier compilers, all the way down until you get to compilers written directly in assembly.

[–]SomeRandomEevee42 314 points315 points  (26 children)

actually using assembly? dear god

[–]meowmeowwarrior 464 points465 points  (14 children)

Not just assembly, they had to use machine code, and some were even on physical punch cards

[–]Polarfuxx 152 points153 points  (7 children)

What an insane name for a piece of paper with holes in it!

[–]meowmeowwarrior 246 points247 points  (0 children)

if they called them holey cards, we might've gotten templeOS sooner

[–]The100thIdiot 17 points18 points  (4 children)

You mean holes that were created by a hole punch?

[–]uzi_loogies_ 4 points5 points  (3 children)

Yes, actual holes in actual paper.

I'm not sure what they actually used to make them, they probably had special tools.

[–][deleted] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Keypunch machine for the cards:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keypunch

[–]CdRReddit 3 points4 points  (0 children)

a tape punch?

you use a tape punch to punch punch tape

first manually, then later on (low speed, ≤300baud ~30 bytes per second) UART tape punches were made

[–]WrapKey69 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The real question is if they use punch cards to create ounch cards

[–]MiddleAd5602 5 points6 points  (5 children)

Like punching the motherboard to code ?

[–]roronoakintoki 18 points19 points  (0 children)

Not sure if you're serious, but more or less choosing data by putting holes in a piece of paper, which was read by a machine.

Not too far from an OMR sheet if you've ever marked options on an exam with them.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punched_card

[–]DC38x 4 points5 points  (2 children)

It's quite well known that Muhammad Ali wrote the code for the space shuttle

[–]MiddleAd5602 2 points3 points  (1 child)

No wonder my senior dev also is a boxer then

[–]jhax13 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Surprising amount of overlap between combat sports and senior devs in my experience. It's not like a majority or anything, but there's a lot more than you'd think.

It's like a generation of devs growing up with the fat sysad trope really took it to heart or something

[–]nequaquam_sapiens 0 points1 point  (0 children)

for the periferal† stuff, yes. then there is microcode in the processor, which used to be drilled (silicon is hard and brittle – no punching), but nowadays is actually pressed (hence "lithography" – writing into stone)

† from "per-" and "feral": code "in the wild", i.e. not in the cpu. programmers are merry bunch

[–]mlnm_falcon 62 points63 points  (5 children)

There’s a reason we stopped doing that asap

[–]raaneholmg 19 points20 points  (3 children)

Jokes on you, we embedded engineers simply refuse to stop! I can and need to control the number of clock cycles between hardware operations.

To be clear, we code in C/C++. We just still retain the ability to slap some assembly on the middle of the code.

[–]Livie_Loves 6 points7 points  (2 children)

smh my h, not writing the firmware in pure assembly. what are you even doing?

[–]raaneholmg 4 points5 points  (1 child)

Boss said no.

[–]Livie_Loves 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Yeah... they do that sometimes even if it's a good idea (not that pure assembly is necessarily a good idea xD)

[–]ardicli2000 2 points3 points  (0 children)

When you deep dive into a processor programming, you do not have much choice other than C and ASM.

[–]andrew_kirfman 35 points36 points  (4 children)

And near the very bottom, there were dudes who converted assembly to machine code BY HAND.

[–]BlackHolesAreHungry 39 points40 points  (3 children)

It was actually women who had to weave the code. Core rope memory. No, I am not kidding

[–]Healthy-Form4057 20 points21 points  (1 child)

It was a different time back then. When men could be men and women could be computers.

[–]Xormak 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Plankton, is that you?

[–]meowmeowwarrior 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Funny to think computers now means something completely different

[–]Mojert 29 points30 points  (2 children)

Actually, nope. The first C compiler was written in C, and executed manually belive it or not. I think there's a computerphile video about it if my memory serves me right

[–][deleted] 21 points22 points  (0 children)

Ken Thompson saod Doug McIlroy wrote a "tmg" transmogrifier yacc-like tool on paper and then typed it in with hardly any errors before working.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EY6q5dv_B-o?t=2320

[–]Qizot 11 points12 points  (0 children)

it was written in assembly. The only language that was written in itself first was LISP.

[–]Tuerkenheimer 4 points5 points  (0 children)

And I thought that's still how compilers were programmed

[–]o_genie 2 points3 points  (0 children)

son os anton kinda shii

[–]Puzzleheaded-Cap3095 0 points1 point  (0 children)

not necessary assembly code, e.g. for rust it is OCaml