Bits and Bytes (1983)
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Just finished episode 4, and I was wondering who exactly creates the language that the computer can read?
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@connorsoliver said in Bits and Bytes (1983):
Just finished episode 4, and I was wondering who exactly creates the language that the computer can read?
Anyone, really. You could, if you were bored. The hardware itself has a binary language for the CPU. That's part of the CPU itself. That's "machine language". There is a special language for each CPU called Assembly that's like a "semi-human readable binary equivalent."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assembly_language
No one writes in Assembly, because it takes forever to do anything and is super error prone. But the first language for any computer has to be written this way.
Once you have a CPU, then you start by making a compiler. The first compiler has to be written in Assembly OR written on another computer where there are already languages to work with.
Pretty typically, the first language prepared for any computer is going to be C. Just because it is the universal language that everyone uses for everything basic and the moment that you have C working, a million things can be ported in no time to your new computer.
After that, people just make languages as they want.
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In the old days, like in the Commodore 64 days, this was made very confusing because a normal programming language, called BASIC, was often baked into the hardware ROM on the computer so that you could use it even if you had no cassette or floppy containing a new language. So people associate that version of BASIC with that computer, because it is a language that literally everyone with that machine had access to.
BUt that was just one of numerous languages available for it. C, Pascal, Assembly, etc. were all available, just not baked in to the ROM.
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Episode 5 down. The relationship between computers and telephones, and the technology of the modem is fascinating to me. Was this the basis of the internet?
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@connorsoliver said in Bits and Bytes (1983):
Episode 5 down. The relationship between computers and telephones, and the technology of the modem is fascinating to me. Was this the basis of the internet?
No, the Internet went back to 1969 and predated modems. The Internet was built on T1 leased lines that connected universities together digitally. The modem does predate that, but was used by companies to connect branch offices together in a non-Internet system. For a very long time, modem connections were only for remote teletype or teletype simulation, so no networking, just a remote display. Kind of like a long distance "keyboard and monitor", which is quite different from a network.
The original modems were literally connected to typewriter keyboards and typewriter keys and weren't used with computers at all. They were literally a "typewriter" interface so that you could hit the keys in one place and have it print out in another (upgraded telegrams.) Very low level tech.
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@JaredBusch said in Bits and Bytes (1983):
Clickable URL for everyone..
http://hatchermangohill.com/About Us.htmlSorry, didn't notice the URL broke. I did notice the space, but I thought the %20 copied over when I pasted it. LOL
Don't be too hard on that FrontPage web site, I think my great-aunt maintains it (Marilyn in the lower picture on that page), and she's in her 80's. I'm just happy that she was able to put it together. She still runs the place, so if any of you are ever down that way, drop in and see her. The Hatcher mango is SOOO good! OK, I'll admit some bias.
I've been really wanting to get down to south Florida to visit family. Haven't been there in 20 years. Really want my son to see the Mango Hill.
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The use of modems for networking was super rare even in the 1980s when the Internet was pretty heavily used. If you hear people talk about BBS (Bulletin Board Systems), that they show in Bits and Bytes I think, that's not networking, that's still just a remote keyboard and display on a single computer. No network.
The use of modems for networking was pretty much a product of the 1990s and not common until the late 1990s.
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Just finished watching Episode 6 on computer languages. Made me wonder about when operating systems come into the picture.
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@connorsoliver said in Bits and Bytes (1983):
Just finished watching Episode 6 on computer languages. Made me wonder about when operating systems come into the picture.
They don't necessarily. In 1983 they were relatively uncommon. The early really popular OSes were CP/M which was the granddaddy of DOS, and AmigaOS in the home computing world. In the Commodore 64 and Apple ][ era, people didn't run operating systems. They treated computers way more like an old video gaming console - you had to turn on the machine and boot into the application (often a game) that you wanted to use and turn it off when you were done.
Operating systems weren't popular until computers were powerful enough to switch between tasks and storage was permanent (hard drives) or people had large floppies. The utility of CP/M or DOS was super low unless you had crazy powerful machines.
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Today, running with an OS feels totally crazy. But at the time, it was a layer of complexity that just wasn't needed.
What computers do today is so much more complex. From needing libraries, windowing systems, GUIs, graphics, networking - all things that you normally get from your OS and don't reinvent every time for every application.
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Episode 7 Complete. I'm curious at to how common it was to have computers in the classroom back then. Anyone who are up in the 80's know if it was a regular things to be dealing with computers in classes?
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@connorsoliver said in Bits and Bytes (1983):
Episode 7 Complete. I'm curious at to how common it was to have computers in the classroom back then. Anyone who are up in the 80's know if it was a regular things to be dealing with computers in classes?
We had a computer lab. one classroom of computers.
Mid to late 80's, small town (~10,000) southern Illinois.
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My parents bought us a TI 99/4A around 1983. I know some of the local schools had the TI's at the time as my parents actually bought a couple more 2-3 years later from a school that was getting rid of them. I don't remember having the TI's in class though. I do remember having three Apple IIe's in my eighth grade classroom (87-88). I distinctly remember trying to spell out an acronym like this:
M - Multi
L - Letter
A - AcronymLined up perfect on the screen, but was all messed up when it got printed. That was my first introduction to the need for WYSIWYG (the young'uns probably never heard of that acronym!).
At Tennessee Tech as a freshman in 1992, I got introduced to the VAX system, which was already quite dated. Not long afterwards, they got a lab of brand-new 386 PC's that booted to a menu, from which you could pick the application you wanted to run (choices included Word Perfect 5.1, Lotus 1-2-3, and Quattro Pro). A couple of years later, we had a lab with NT 3.5. I think there may have been a Windows 95 lab before I left, but by then I wasn't living on campus, and had my own PC I had built.
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Episode 4 done. Wondering if you have to put a stop command in a program or is there a specific way to do it?
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@connorsoliver said in Bits and Bytes (1983):
Episode 7 Complete. I'm curious at to how common it was to have computers in the classroom back then. Anyone who are up in the 80's know if it was a regular things to be dealing with computers in classes?
I was in school then and in the 81-85 years they were just starting to show up. In the CLASSROOM they were rare, but SCHOOL they were common. We just had dedicated computer labs, not computers in random classrooms (mostly.)
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Episode 5...The Source sounds like the 80s version of Google lol
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@mary said in Bits and Bytes (1983):
Episode 5...The Source sounds like the 80s version of Google lol
It was, to quite some degree.
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@scottalanmiller is there still limitations on the amount of computers you have on a network?
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@mary said in Bits and Bytes (1983):
@scottalanmiller is there still limitations on the amount of computers you have on a network?
So yes and no. Yes those old networks still exist and have those limits. And "modern" Internet accessing (aka IPv4) has some complicated limits, the numbers are huge.
What's different today is two fold...
- We deal in both networks and internetworks today. So while one network might be limited to 20 computers, you might also have a limit of 20 networks networked together in an internetwork. So we have the concept of routing stuff from one network to another. This makes discussions of "network sizes" very different than they used to be.
- Sizes of networks have changed completely. We used to have limits like "5", now we have limits like "2,000". So we perceive the limits very differently.
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Episode 6 done. I wish I was exposed to Logo as a kid. It actually looked fun. That kid's story about the triangle baby turtle was epic. The look on that teacher's face
.Wondering if we still need compilers for translating program language to machine?
