Eye for an 'i'

[whole diary]

[Adelante_CCT]

A query for the admins, just wondering why an 'i' has appeared at the top left of the forum over the past few days?

[grahame]

A query for the admins, just wondering why an 'i' has appeared at the top left of the forum over the past few days?

Now I see it ...

[grahame]

A query for the admins, just wondering why an 'i' has appeared at the top left of the forum over the past few days?

Now I see it ...

Now I don't.

Sorry about that - the extra "i" was added in error when I pasted in the JavaScript code to improve the like button. Now fixed.   It was only today I was teaching about testing to make sure that one positive change doesn't have a negative effect elsewhere ... sometimes easier said than done!

[eightf48544]

Too true. Used to have a Senior Programmer who always asked when a bug fix failed.

"Repeat after me, "The only other change I made was....."

[PhilWakely]

I remember working as a Programmer about 20 years ago on one of the early mis-selling scandals. I was working Saturday overtime and had to produce about 20,000 letters to customers. We coded the letter, proof-read it and proof-read it again and again. All was approved, so we ordered the final print run. Only after the first half dozen boxes of letters had been produced did we spot a rather glaring error where a ^ sign had been replaced by a $. So we aborted the run and re-coded the letter - just a simple single-character substitution  so it was done and the print job started again.  The change had been done successfully, but somehow the printer control had been mucked up and each page had just a single line printed.

Much egg on face and more than a dozen boxes of special stationery ruined! Oops 

[BerkshireBugsy]

In the days when I used to do programming I was told there was no such thing as a one-line code change and they always came in pairs..

1st line would fix the original problem as reported
2nd line would fix the bug introduced by the first one.

I was also told the phrase "one off program" was the name given to a standard utility prior to its second run...

Oh, this takes me back!

Anyone else remember card readers?!

[Oxonhutch]

You aren't anyone until you have dropped your cards! 

I know - I have. And it was a long time ago ... 

[BerkshireBugsy]

You aren't anyone until you have dropped your cards! 

I know - I have. And it was a long time ago ... 

And if that deck of cards happens to be the bootstrap loader for a mainframe it doesn't go down (or come back up) well

[Oxman]

Paper tape was safer! (for bootstraps).

[BerkshireBugsy]

Paper tape was safer! (for bootstraps).

Do you remember the Mohawk readers ?!

[Oxonhutch]

And if that deck of cards happens to be the bootstrap loader for a mainframe it doesn't go down (or come back up) well

No, just a simple SAS run for several hundred analyses. Still it took hours to fix and several false starts.  A colleague of mine managed to 'bend a pin' on the same mainframe through the departmental modem - you know, the one where the telephone handset was placed in the modem's cradle.  But then he was a disaster waiting to happen!

Paper tape was safer! (for bootstraps)

The continuous paper-tape loop on the replica Colossus at Bletchley Park is humbling to behold. Respect!

[ellendune]

I did do some programming in the days of punched tape and cards.  I do not recall ever dropping my cards, but I do remember the frightening message back from the operators - "Sorry the computer chewed your cards - please retype!"

I also remember typing a command line to load a programme - "Copy from pecker to memory" or sometimes, when starting from scratch, "Copy to memory".

I also when doing data logging out on site (In this http://www.departmentals.com/photo/901601)having to start the generator early so that we could use the hair dryer to dry out the paper tape punch that logged our data. Leaving it in a damp railway siding overnight was not good for the punch paper tape machines. That gave us time for to make and have tea before we started work.