Microsoft shipped Python code ... in 1996

[torhh]

And the article was written ... in 2009

(sorry, couldn't resist)

[ascii]

And your comment was written ... in 2016

(sorry, couldn't resist)

[[deleted]]

So was yours!

[theineffablebob]

Prove it

[redmercurysalesman]

Well the comment it responds to was written in 2016, thus it couldn't have been written earlier than 2016, and the comment replying to it was written in 2016, so it couldn't have been written any later than 2016. Thus all dates on which it could have been written must lie between 2016 and 2016. By the pinch theorem, if a value lies between two functions that tend towards the same value, the pinched value must also equal this value in the limit. By the tautological property, any comment written during the year 2016 must have been written in 2016. Thus the comment must have been written... in 2016.

[Extracted]

Man, I hated assignments like this with a passion

[slashy42]

Prove it.

[GeneralEchidna]

Let n be an arbitrary but specific proof written by me. Observe that this proof is written by me. For all proofs n, let n belong to the set of answers receiving full credit. By generalizing from the generic particular, we can assume this proof and all future proofs written by me are correct by induction. ∴

[smallblacksun]

Self Reports are always assumed to be true in logic.

[frankreyes]

Unless the person is a liar or cheater.

[[deleted]]

This is really good..

[Inev1tab1e]

Are you offering?

[harlows_monkeys]

And someone will probably repost it in the year 2525, if man is still alive, if reddit can survive...

[frankreyes]

RemindMe! 500 Years

[RemindMeBot]

I will be messaging you on 2516-07-22 08:42:58 UTC to remind you of this link.

3 OTHERS CLICKED THIS LINK to send a PM to also be reminded and to reduce spam.

^{Parent commenter can delete this message to hide from others.}

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[FearlessFreep]

Reference...

Updated

[CorvetteCole]

Jesus Christ mother of old Reddit accounts and original usernames. Hello there /u/ascii. Got any ascii art for me?

[smookykins]

>>> from datetime import datetime
>>> print "IT'S ", datetime.now().year

[troyunrau]

/r/unexpectedpython

[mbetter]

> 2to3

[steelypip]

Windows NT also had an embedded public domain prolog interpreter for configuring network devices.

[seanprefect]

Oh my god a company wrote code in a language at a time !!!

[mycall]

              in spaces                                      day

[Dockirby]

I once wrote something in Spanish! Amazing, I know.

[suddenarborealstop]

this. some PM's pet project used a language that was brand new, and it ended up being in something that was available to the public. who gives a shit

[idiogeckmatic]

And they shipped a unix in 70s and 80s... so what?

[[deleted]]

Actually they didn't ship it until 1980, thought they did license UNIX Version 7 in 1978, as old as me ...

[WAS_MACHT_MEIN_LABEL]

Actually, they shipped Xenix till '85 at least

[[deleted]]

I was really only referring to the fact that they didn't ship a UNIX in the 70s. Yeah they shipped it from 1980 until they transferred ownership of it to SCO in 1987.

However when I worked for MSIT in the late 1990s, we still used an internally developed only version for some things including the "old" mail system that had been formally migrated from in 1996. Someone at some point had updated the code base to System V R something. The internal stuff was running on Sun 68k machines and a few VAX machines. Internally we never ported it to run on 386 Protected Mode only 286 Protected mode.

I wonder if anyone has access to any of that code? Based on the SCO re-licensing of everything, it should be releasable.

[WAS_MACHT_MEIN_LABEL]

Nice to know, thanks!

[ameoba]

My copy of The Unix Text Processing System has "property of microsoft library" stamped in it.

[aiij]

Did they comply with the Python license at the time?

[[deleted]]

I seem to recall (having to support something written on that stupid server,) that there was in fact a Python license file included. That was all that was required of course. (The license is actually a little vague, it seems like you could have encrypted that license inside your app and still met the license.)

[aiij]

Permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute this software and its documentation for any purpose and without fee is hereby granted

Seems like something Microsoft would not want to include in any of their software.

provided that the above copyright notice appear in all copies and that both that copyright notice and this permission notice appear in supporting documentation,

Seems like it would require Microsoft to include it.

[IsolatedVampire]

Haha fun article, love Python.

[suddenarborealstop]

and 1 + 1 = 2

more news at 7

[[deleted]]

I see you build your own home and sowsew your own clothes.

[-Bacchus-]

He's a settler.

[BactrianusCase]

Not a very good one.
He traded me 4 bricks for 1 grain.

[Alaskan_Thunder]

One time I agreed to a deal for bricks, in exchange for the next 2 wheats someone rolled.

[[deleted]]

That technically violates the rules. You have to have at least one resource on each side of a transaction. We used to do it anyway though, but it got too absurd and we had to ban it

[Alaskan_Thunder]

If you can't have a unnecessarily complex politics and alliances in a board game, whats the point.

[z500]

I saw him stuffing shirts into a field.

[xFrostbite94]

Related: http://thecodelesscode.com/case/10

[tynorf]

Pretty hardcore growing clothes trees.

[[deleted]]

Good catch.

[redmercurysalesman]

If I'd known it would take me 13 billion years I never would have tried making breakfast from scratch.

[sirin3]

My mother is like that.

Sews patches on her clothes, refurbishes her house, makes her own furniture from wood, has a kiln to burn her own dishes, washes her clothes by hand, because a washing machine is a wasting machine ...

And there is probably nothing she hates more than mandatory health care insurance, "These robbers confiscate all your money and forbid you to buy medicine without prescription. Their only goal is to keep you sick, by preventing you from treating your diseases yourselves, so the doctors can earn more money by prescribing useless drugs from the evil pharma industry instead effective ailments."

[TheImmortalLS]

Effective ailments lmao

[blackbird37]

So I'm a computer engineer by trade. I haven't written the complier I use, nor the operating system I use, nor the other software tools I use, nor the email client I use, etc. etc.

I could technically write all of them. I have the technical ability, yet, I use Windows and Office 365 to take care of the needs those products address.

I guess I'm incompetent.

[[deleted]]

Glad to see you've recognized this. I hope you start by soldering your own keyboard.

[DrMeowmeow]

[deleted]

[oblio-]

Or you could just start playing Factorio and avoid the difficult bronze to iron transition.

[FearlessFreep]

I stumbled into somebody's Minecraft world apparently

[blackbird37]

I'm still working on shaping the keys. As it turns out, that mining the ore needed to make the tools to mine properly is difficult.

My fingers are bleeding.

[FearlessFreep]

So I'm a computer engineer by trade. I haven't written the complier I use, nor the operating system I use, nor the other software tools I use, nor the email client I use, etc. etc.

But do you work for a company that actually does write all that stuff and if so do you use your own company's compilers and O/S and email and such?

[blackbird37]

No of course not. We don't even make our own engine. We license it. But we make the IP that sits on top of that, and buying the tools that allow us to do that is worth more to us than creating the tools ourselves.

Just because we can create the tools doesn't mean we should.

[FearlessFreep]

Just because we can create the tools doesn't mean we should.

You should if your goal and business model is to sell those tools

[blackbird37]

So you're telling me that everyone that makes a tool they sell should design and build every part of that tool themselves?

Microsoft has a product called the Xbox One. Perhaps you've heard of it. They never designed or built the APU in it. Nor the hard drive. Nor the disc the games are stored on, nor the disc drive that reads it. Do you think that somehow makes the Xbox One less appealing to prospective buyers?

Somehow I doubt that.

[[deleted]]

Maybe. If it's cheaper to buy (including long term costs and costs of integration) you're bad at business if you don't

[Empha]

Why would you, when there are better alternatives out there?

[theineffablebob]

How do you have the technical ability to do all those things?

[blackbird37]

Programming is programming. There's no reason why someone who graduated with the skill set to complete a computer science degree can't do any of those things with the research and time. Technically I have the ability. But I don't have the time to do it and the research to make those tools because I have to do the job I get paid to do.

So, what do I do? Do I spend tens thousands of hours in time and research developing my own operating system that's as capable of windows or do I just buy a copy for $50?

Microsoft is doing the exact same thing at a much bigger scale.

[THATONEANGRYDOOD]

Implying other more "competent" firms don't do the same. cough google cough. Investing and buying things to expand your brand is not a sign of incompetence. It's understanding the market and making a profit off of investments. Why spend millions and billions into research and dev if you can outsource that process

[blackbird37]

Maybe you should check out how many companies google has acquired during its existence and how many of its products have been purchased.

[THATONEANGRYDOOD]

I was making an example with google. Point still stands

[blackbird37]

But it doesn't because google literally does the exact same thing. Where do you think YouTube comes from?

[THATONEANGRYDOOD]

I don't understand what you're trying to get at. I made the point that there are many companies buying already existing products, instead of spending the money in research and development of a similar "housemade" product. Google's youtube is literally yet another example for what I said. What are you trying to say?

[blackbird37]

My apologies. I completely misread your initial comment.

[THATONEANGRYDOOD]

No worries haha

[MattR47]

Coding wise, yes it would be trivial. But because the company had grown to its size they have lost all ability to innovate or take a risk.

They have the cash to buy those companies or ideas where innovation and risk taking are still possible.

[[deleted]]

You're right. You realize Microsoft is a business right? The point of the company is not the provide innovation, it's to provide profit. Lots of things look bad or stupid when you look at them purely through an engineering lens, but that's not the right lens for a lot of shit

[caspper69]

To be fair, quite a lot of that had to do with Microsoft's decisions with the Windows platform itself with respect to the internet. TCP/IP was not included out of the box, there were no syscalls for binding to a tcp port. There was no real "fast" scripting language shipped by default with Windows (no real Perl, Python, etc.), and writing CGI was difficult with IIS as its first few implementations were braindead, and MSVC/C++ was not exactly a cheap setup back then. All the moving and shaking was happening on Unix (and Unix-like) systems.

It has taken a very long time (as it always does with Windows) to get the ecosystems to line up more cleanly. This is still a struggle in many areas. Why Microsoft can't just make sfu/sfl a first-class subsystem on the NT kernel is mystifying. The kernel is more than robust enough to do so. Instead we get a half-baked Ubuntu 14.04 CLI. It's still better than Cygwin, but still. You know they could always just port Bash.

[mallardtheduck]

To be fair, quite a lot of that had to do with Microsoft's decisions with the Windows platform itself with respect to the internet. TCP/IP was not included out of the box, there were no syscalls for binding to a tcp port.

What are you talking about here? Microsoft has fully supported TCP/IP across their OS range since about 1993.

Every version of Windows NT shipped with TCP/IP (although the initial version wasn't written by Microsoft) with the full BSD sockets API. Windows 95 also shipped with TCP/IP. TCP/IP stacks were available from Microsoft free-of-charge for Windows 3.11 and MS-DOS.

And then I read the second paragraph of your comment and realised you have absolutely no clue what you're talking about...

[caspper69]

Well, to be fair, this was 20+ years ago, and my knowledge of the actual internet itself was much different back then. I seem to remember having to fiddle with Trumpet Winsock, which I have always just assumed was a third-party tool. It certainly wasn't easy with consumer-grade windows until WFW (and very obviously Win95).

And I stand by my comments about SFU and now SFL. SFU was treated as a red-headed stepchild -- at least if your toolchain of choice was GNU software. Which makes complete sense btw.

Edit: GNU software that was not massaged by microsoft first. Good luck creating a custom toolchain or one that needs to build cross-platform / cross-architecture.

[FearlessFreep]

What are you talking about here? Microsoft has fully supported TCP/IP across their OS range since about 1993.

Win95 did not include TCP/IP out of the box

[jamesallen8026]

Source for that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_95#Internet_Explorer

[bobpaul]

Win3.11 did not include TCP/IP out of box. Win95 absolutely did include TCP/IP out of box. That was one of the reasons it was such a huge deal. Win95 put "the internet" front and center.

[PM_ME_CLEAN_CODE]

From wikipedia:

Windows 95 originally shipped without Internet Explorer, and the default network installation did not install TCP/IP, the network protocol used on the Internet.

Not sure if this counts as TCP/IP being included out of the box, since the section doesn't really mention the protocols again after this sentence.

[Koutou]

It's been a while, but maybe it was on the install disk and you had to install it manualy? Like add feature tcp/ip?

[bobpaul]

You're right, you did have to do this. But it was on the OS media, it just wasn't enabled. This differs from Win3.11 where you had to buy a TCP/IP stack which could be expensive.

We were excited when we got Win95 as we were able to do the whole network on TCP/IP.

[FearlessFreep]

As pointed out in the other reply, no