Byte Me: Compilation Vacation

  • Comments posted to this topic are about the item Byte Me: Compilation Vacation

  • Sounds like someone's compiling SQL Server for Linux on a Raspberry Pi Zero !

    Ben

    ^ Thats me!

    ----------------------------------------
    01010111011010000110000101110100 01100001 0110001101101111011011010111000001101100011001010111010001100101 01110100011010010110110101100101 011101110110000101110011011101000110010101110010
    ----------------------------------------

  • Hands up - who else is old enough to recall writing your code out by hand, posting it to a department in another part of the country, to be typed into the mainframe and then getting a huge printout of syntax errors several days later?

  • BrainDonor - Wednesday, February 22, 2017 2:06 AM

    Hands up - who else is old enough to recall writing your code out by hand, posting it to a department in another part of the country, to be typed into the mainframe and then getting a huge printout of syntax errors several days later?

    Ah yes...the days of steam. Stuff was slower, no doubt about that. More tranquil too. A bit different than today's technology-fuelled headlong rush.
    Or maybe it's just that distance lends enchantment to the view.

    MarkD

  • BrainDonor - Wednesday, February 22, 2017 2:06 AM

    Hands up - who else is old enough to recall writing your code out by hand, posting it to a department in another part of the country, to be typed into the mainframe and then getting a huge printout of syntax errors several days later?

    At school we had a Computer Society. Home computers like the Amstrad were years away and as a project we built one that could only do basic arithmetic operations. We were taught to code in Algol. After writing our source code out this was taken to the local polytechnic. We often did not know what our coding errors were for a fortnight unless the teacher made an extra journey in his rusty but trusty Zephyr 4 and we knew the next week. Little did I know it would become my second career over a decade later... 

    Never used Algol again but in 2001 I was coding in the equally ancient Lisp!

  • BrainDonor - Wednesday, February 22, 2017 2:06 AM

    Hands up - who else is old enough to recall writing your code out by hand, posting it to a department in another part of the country, to be typed into the mainframe and then getting a huge printout of syntax errors several days later?

    At university in the 70's, I punched my cards and submitted them. They were sent over a dedicated line to the main university to be run there (our school had a mere 26,000 students). Picked up my deck and the printout several hours later.

  • Julie Breutzmann - Wednesday, February 22, 2017 7:44 AM

    BrainDonor - Wednesday, February 22, 2017 2:06 AM

    Hands up - who else is old enough to recall writing your code out by hand, posting it to a department in another part of the country, to be typed into the mainframe and then getting a huge printout of syntax errors several days later?

    At university in the 70's, I punched my cards and submitted them. They were sent over a dedicated line to the main university to be run there (our school had a mere 26,000 students). Picked up my deck and the printout several hours later.

    I started college in 1989, so I missed the punch cards, but I do recall sending mainframe jobs off and waiting several minutes (depending upon how busy the labs were) to hopefully see a return code of 0000 (perfect!) or no more than 0004 (which meant "it compiled, but warning!").  0012 or 0016 meant you were fixing and resubmitting.  COBOL, FORTRAN, Waterloo Pascal, Assembler all come to mind.

  • Julie Breutzmann - Wednesday, February 22, 2017 7:44 AM

    BrainDonor - Wednesday, February 22, 2017 2:06 AM

    Hands up - who else is old enough to recall writing your code out by hand, posting it to a department in another part of the country, to be typed into the mainframe and then getting a huge printout of syntax errors several days later?

    At university in the 70's, I punched my cards and submitted them. They were sent over a dedicated line to the main university to be run there (our school had a mere 26,000 students). Picked up my deck and the printout several hours later.

    Our University had a similar setup.  I remember, one time, getting my printout back only to discover that the one error found was a missing semicolon.  After standing in line for several minutes waiting for access to a card punch, I sat down at a table, pulled out my IBM "green card" and looked up the card punch code for a semicolon.  I then took the offending card and cut out the appropriate rectangles with my pocket knife.  It compiled clean and I went home for the night.

  • Code compilation isn't much of an issue in my realm. However, if a user runs a query that joins two or more billion row tables using a non-indexed expression and a nested loop hint, they can pack up and leave for the weekend.

    "Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise. Instead, seek what they sought." - Matsuo Basho

  • Back in the mid 80's I was going to school at DeVry in Kansas City.  We had to submit our COBOL programs to compile during our one hour lab time.  I believe all of the programs where Que'd up and sent to a computer in Chicago to actually do the compile.  We had to wait until the next day to review our compile for any errors like missing periods.  If we got our programs sent off early in our hour we used to go sit and watch the 'Love Connection' in the lounge area.  Going to Hawaii to wait sounds a lot better. 🙂

    -------------------------------------------------------------
    we travel not to escape life but for life not to escape us
    Don't fear failure, fear regret.

  • below86 - Wednesday, February 22, 2017 1:42 PM

    Back in the mid 80's I was going to school at DeVry in Kansas City.  We had to submit our COBOL programs to compile during our one hour lab time.  I believe all of the programs where Que'd up and sent to a computer in Chicago to actually do the compile.  We had to wait until the next day to review our compile for any errors like missing periods.  If we got our programs sent off early in our hour we used to go sit and watch the 'Love Connection' in the lounge area.  Going to Hawaii to wait sounds a lot better. 🙂

    Yeah, I was attending university around '90 - '92. That whole thing about having to wait for your stuff to compile and run, and also a lack of access to quality online forums or browsable documentation, cultivated a sort of laid back potato chip eating image of programming.

    "Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise. Instead, seek what they sought." - Matsuo Basho

  • Eric M Russell - Wednesday, February 22, 2017 2:03 PM

    below86 - Wednesday, February 22, 2017 1:42 PM

    Back in the mid 80's I was going to school at DeVry in Kansas City.  We had to submit our COBOL programs to compile during our one hour lab time.  I believe all of the programs where Que'd up and sent to a computer in Chicago to actually do the compile.  We had to wait until the next day to review our compile for any errors like missing periods.  If we got our programs sent off early in our hour we used to go sit and watch the 'Love Connection' in the lounge area.  Going to Hawaii to wait sounds a lot better. 🙂

    Yeah, I was attending university around '90 - '92. That whole thing about having to wait for your stuff to compile and run, and also a lack of access to quality online forums or browsable documentation, cultivated a sort of laid back potato chip eating image of programming.

    When you may only get one run a day, you took time to check very carefully. Some programs may have had low priorities, too, so you could get bumped in the queue, too.

  • I recall when I started on a project written in C (with some assembler for performance) utilising a pre_SQL relational database - Informix 3.3) running under Unix on a Plessey System 68 the company introduced flexi-time as some programmes could take up to an hour to compile! Six of us were using one system...

  • Anyone who thinks it's OK to compile and leave can have a one way ticket as far as I am concerned (unless otherwise agreed by colleagues).

    Gaz

    -- Stop your grinnin' and drop your linen...they're everywhere!!!

  • What's annoying are fire-and-forget monster queries, where the user disconnects their laptop and goes home for the day, leaving the orphan process running overnight with no one on the other end of the call to see the result. Too bad we can't KILL {user} in addition to KILL {spid}.  :ermm:

    "Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise. Instead, seek what they sought." - Matsuo Basho

Viewing 15 posts - 1 through 15 (of 16 total)

You must be logged in to reply to this topic. Login to reply