A Few Words for the Whippersnappers

Back when I was a young pup, before the world decided that it needed “mice” and “keyboards” and “editors” and “compilers”, we programmed by burning tiny holes in ribbons of paper tape with magnifying glasses, and then feeding them into Mastodon, our 80-ton Difference Engine. Mastodon was installed on a small island in the South Pacific — which, sadly, sunk under its weight long ago. But that was a real machine! It used to take us three really sunny afternoons and about twelve reams of calculator paper to write a Hello World program, but it was worth it. It felt like we really doing something. We cherished our hello worlds back then. We’d feed them into Mastodon’s input receptacle — and then, about two days later, it would shriek and shake and belch a giant black cloud of smog and spit out a response tape with the words “Hello Wor” on it (there wasn’t quite enough memory for the whole thing). It was quite a thrill. We’d put on an 8-track and crack open a couple of Tabs and set up tables in Mastodon’s giant shadow and have a little party. Those were the days.

I understand that a lot of you whippersnappers have two and maybe three “monitors” on your desk these days. Pansies, all of you. First of all, a “monitor” is nothing more than a hopped up piece of illuminated, color tape. And not very good tape, at that. When you children “scroll” in your “browsers”, what happens to all that text after it disappears off the top of your “windows”? It’s gone, isn’t it? Well, we didn’t have that problem with tape. Tape doesn’t go away. I still have the output of my first Hello Wor program, somewhere among the 54 metric tons of tape I store in my basement. I have the output of every program I ever wrote, in fact. Where’s the first Hello World you ever wrote, child? Oh, you don’t have it? Oh, it fizzled into the ether after you turned off your “monitor”? Isn’t that a shame.

And that reminds me: ASCII. I’ve never seen such a wasteful standard. Back in my day, we didn’t have your giant, sprawling “bytes”. We didn’t need 8 bits, ok? We made do with what we called “mincing rabbit nibbles”, which had two bits, and two was all we needed to represent our alphabet — which, last time I checked, was the same alphabet that you greedy little bit suckers are using. Sure, we had to eliminate all the vowels, and all punctuation, and, yes, every one of our bits had to represent 6 possible letters, but they represented them proudly! They weren’t ashamed, and neither were we.

And another thing: bits. Whenever I hear one of you higher-language infants sneering dismissively about “ones” and “zeroes”, it makes my blood boil. Because, for one thing, if all you have to do to add two numbers is write “number + number”, then you’re not really programming, are you? You’re just banging on your toy language’s giant color buttons, squealing in delight when the right numbers come out. Well, you may get the same answers we did, and you may get them several orders of magnitude faster, with 3000% less code, predictably, without having to rewire any circuit boards — but you’re not programming. Try building an air traffic control system with nothing but holes burned into a world spanning piece of calculator tape. Then we can talk.

Also, I understand that your newfangled, 21st-century bits have two states. Back in my day, we didn’t need two, ok? Wasteful! All we had was zeroes. Sure, it wasn’t easy programming when you had no way of registering (or generating) state — and, sure, arithmetic operations were more exercises in probabilistic reasoning than “calculation”. But we managed! I’d like to see any of you wet-behind-the-ears adolescents writing one of your “E-MAIL” programs with just zeroes! Good luck with that. And, when the world runs out of ones, don’t come crying to us, ok? It’s not like we didn’t warn you.