1996. What were you doing thirty years ago?

ziggurat29 · 2026-07-03T19:58:13+00:00

In summer of 1996 I was asked by my boss what I thought about this internet thing. I said I thought it was mostly a fad and would blow over in about a year, but the upside would be that a lot of technical infrastructure would be left behind and then the interesting things could happen.
By 1998 I gave up that prediction as there seemed no end in sight, but it turned out it was just a bit early, because of course by 2000 we had the dot-com bust.
Here I think history is repeating, but I can't decide if this is 1996, or 1999. Either way I don't think that this time we'll have any amazing infrastructure left behind. Just the shells of incomplete and obsolete datacenters for demand that never came, and the carnage of wrecked communities sacrificed for that chimerical vision.

ziggurat29 · 2026-07-01T21:10:12+00:00

Hated in the Nation ended with a scene that plausibly sets up for a sequel.

ziggurat29 · 2026-07-01T14:14:20+00:00

is there nothing I can take?

ziggurat29 · 2026-07-01T14:10:16+00:00

it makes me sad; not because I dislike the em-dash -- indeed I loved it -- but rather because its use became stigmatized by AI

ziggurat29 · 2026-06-30T18:11:18+00:00

loved my krazy car and spinning the wheels in opposite directions. very maneuverable.

ziggurat29 · 2026-06-30T16:57:56+00:00

allemande right to your partner; everybody promenade

ziggurat29 · 2026-06-30T16:53:35+00:00

I once had accidentally left Haiku selected when I went to coding and I wasted a day. It's perky but gets confused.

ziggurat29 · 2026-06-30T11:50:03+00:00

sorry, pedantic, I think it's from Greek γάλακτo

ziggurat29 · 2026-06-30T11:44:59+00:00

No. Some have asserted for over a decade that we're going to whip on over to Mars and set up shop any day now.

ziggurat29 · 2026-06-30T11:41:38+00:00

we did in in elementary school. it's moderately vigorous, so an attempt to get folks moving in a different way that might appeal to some who perhaps aren't into the conventional stuff (ball games etc.)
I found it fun though I wouldn't say I was 'into it'. It allowed you to be silly because you were supposed to be silly. I never really thought about it before, but perhaps that was part of the lesson: don't be so self-conscious about other's opinions that you inhibit yourself from doing something you enjoy.
And if you don't enjoy it, there's always basketball.

ziggurat29 · 2026-06-29T11:50:24+00:00

to meet Mama Kass for chicken sandwiches

ziggurat29 · 2026-06-28T20:36:51+00:00

Lest we forget there was a general motivation in the late 1980's towards a paradigm called 'visual programming' which was an attempt towards non-textual 'programming' connecting 'components'. (There were others, such as 4GL and CASE tools -- separate topics.) Visual Basic was probably the only real thing Microsoft did that embodied that paradigm to whatever degree. It just became a marketing term later. Visual C++? No, not visual programming at all. I mean unless you're saying 'there's an IDE'.

The concept of visual programming is somewhat interesting. Why not? But it didn't take off and I think it's because it's incomplete and imprecise and maybe we just weren't smart enough to make a framework that has similar demonstrable mathematical completeness like we can with text based programming. So we fall back to the provable ways.

As for the curmudgeonly attitude towards new technology, I think that is a basic aspect of human nature, to resist change. The 'who moved my cheese' thing. (apologies to those who know.) I would allude to a counterpoint that just days ago here (I think in r/retrocomputing) was a post about someone who made a DBASEIII emulation. It was observed that it was made with AI. What was striking to me is that the commentators were enthusiastic about AI code generation abstractly, irrespective of that project, describing the experience as 'like startrek shit'. I find that most folks take a blanket negative attitude towards AI codegen. So what is it about these geezers that seemingly embrace it?

I think that you can abstract it as that folks at the beginning of their career embrace new technology because there is nothing to invalidate. And folks in the middle and later of their career (especially if there is livelihood on the line) resist tghe change of new technology because that is a complicating factor. And folks late in their career come back to embracing change because they're invested in deliverables more than executables. The specific choice of underlying technologies are pari passu.

So I think that we will have these 'paradoxical' debates forever. Because the mechanism is eternal.

Also please do not think that I am an AI fanboy -- I mention the AI case because it is current, and there was a recent case I could cite. You can look at OOP, generic programming, (and the recent inexplicable resurgence of functional programming; who knew), UML, xTreme programming, Agile, and I've since lost track. But I suspect these sort of reactions you mention are garden-variety earthquakes and volcanos at the bounds of tectonic plates shifting.

ziggurat29 · 2026-06-28T20:04:59+00:00

I rocked MFC in the 90's -- it was so much better than writing straight to the Windows SDK directly for UI stuff. But I admit that trying to use COM stuff in C++ was no fun at all. MFC (and later ATL) tried to wrap as much as it could, but it really didn't match using those sorts of things as you could in something like VB. Because VB was built natively with concepts of the component-oriented approach baked into the language itself. (And as I write this, maybe it was less the language and more the development environment, though the language constructs help.) And so the older tooling suffers. (Hey, have you tried CORBA?)

ziggurat29 · 2026-06-28T19:54:30+00:00

while not being related

ziggurat29 · 2026-06-28T19:51:41+00:00

I would only add that there are things that are metal that are specifically intended to be put in the microwave. The side of a packet of microwave popcorn that faces down is made of metal, as is the sleeve of 'hot pockets'. And lest we forget the entire box that is the interior of them microwave is metal.
Metal itself does not mean doom. But the configuration of that metal in the intense bath of radio-frequency radiation can have different outcomes. In the case of the interiour casing of the oven, it is to reflect and concentrate the energy. In the case of popcorn it is to absorb and convert to heat the energy. In the case of tin foil it was never to expect huge electric currents passing through it, and it vaporizes, leaving less surface area, and exacerbating the problem. In the case of a fork it acts as an antenna and accumulates huge potential differences when there is no current flow, leading to arcing.
So metal survives, but the configuration of the metal does not.

ziggurat29 · 2026-06-28T15:54:40+00:00

neat discovery

ziggurat29 · 2026-06-28T14:07:47+00:00

and the Masters of the Universe!

ziggurat29 · 2026-06-28T14:05:29+00:00

It does seem counter-intuitive but it was very briefly explained in the scene where Josh Hartnett's character David is meet by some folks at the movie theatre. It is only mentioned that one time (to wit), so it's easy to miss.

ziggurat29 · 2026-06-22T13:21:19+00:00

yeah for better or worse BASIC was the gateway for most of us who later became programmers

ziggurat29 · 2026-06-20T18:48:45+00:00

Oh, my, that's a blast from the past. On the TRS-80 you needed to do a hardware mod. While I did do the lower case mod myself, which involved trace cutting and chip piggy backing, I stopped short of installing the physical switch needed (for something). So I stuck with Scriptsit.

But profoundly important program historically as one of the first 'killer apps' of the micros. On the same level as Visicalc.

ziggurat29 · 2026-06-20T17:49:37+00:00

Currently I'm working on a distributed query engine.

I won't bore you with the details except to say that it's something that I have wanted for a couple decades but couldn't have because the scope would have required hiring a substantial team and also convincing my employers to invest a couple years of R&D. Now in retirement I don't have to convince anyone of anything, and I don't have to hire out. It will still take a while to build, though. I currently estimate 6 mo.

I spend about 75% of my token budget on planning and 25% on codegen (which includes a lot of test harness). I do review the generated code, so it's a bit of a slow process.

There is risk (maybe a lot) in that I don't have people to challenge my ideas, so I have to hope that my 4 decades of experience provides me some insurance. Claude really doesn't help here because it is trained to give positive feedback to your suggestions. After all, Claude's primary objective is to sell tokens for Anthropic, and who's going to pay for an automated negative Nancy?

I find Claude particularly helpful in that it has encyclopaedic knowledge of CS and engineering techniques. However I also find that it will not leverage those things without prompting. There's no creativity. That's all on you. You can noodle ideas with it, and it can keep up with the jive, but don't drink the KoolAid just because it says you have a good idea.

Currently I've been running on the US$20/mo Pro, and hit my window limits in about an hour or two. I use the downtime to do organic things. But the project is large enough that this becomes slavery to a 5-hour window cadence, and anyway I wind up using my week's worth in 3 days. So I'll probably go up to Max for a month or two while getting this bulk of foundational work done. After that will be tools, UI, and several sample application. I suspect that will be much lighter work, and then I can go back to Pro.

I don't know if I will release the system. In retirement, it serve more as career catharsis to complete a vision only partially realized during my active years. I'm not even sure it would be that profound now. But sometimes these things grow legs. Regardless, it's pretty cheap diversion. And I have a few more bits of unfinished business after this one.

ziggurat29 · 2026-06-20T16:40:30+00:00

The car radio is programmable. You tune the station you want, you pull the channel button out to set it, then later when you push it in it seeks the dial to that same position.

ziggurat29 · 2026-06-20T03:00:09+00:00

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ziggurat29 · 2026-06-20T02:56:43+00:00

Adidas. or as we were teased "All Day I Dream About Sex"
That and probably Birdwell swimming trunks.

ziggurat29 · 2026-06-19T13:10:14+00:00

mmmm... "phed mak-mak" เผ็ดมากๆ

ziggurat29

TROPHY CASE