
Guido van Rossum: Before Python - tathagatadg
http://neopythonic.blogspot.com/2011/07/before-python.html
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breck
> "But punch cards are the reason that some software still limits you (or just
> defaults) to 80 characters per line."

Neat. I had always wondered about this.

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seiji
Visually: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Characters_per_line>

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bdesimone
Guido punctuates with more emoticons than a 14 year old girl. :)

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middus
And his use of parentheses is different than I expected:

 _(blabla :-)_ vs _(blabla :-))_

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jedi_stannis
Relevant XKCD: <http://xkcd.com/541/>

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CrazedGeek
I usually do the second way, but put a space between the emoticon and
parenthesis (like so :) )

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16s
I find these old computing stories fascinating. All programming luminaries
should consider putting their history into books for us normal nerds to read
;)

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erikpukinskis
It's amazing how many programmers think that programming is going to look
roughly the same 50 years from now. They imagine the transition from punch
cards to text files was a one time thing... That from here on out it's just
going to be more and more refined text languages.

I think history repeating itself, and programming becoming unrecognizably
different, is much more likely.

But I've also come to terms that those who lack the imagination to start
picturing such things aren't going to believe it until after it happens.

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bergie
I'm actually looking at taking programming beyond text by moving the control
logic to graphs. The idea is based on the concept of Flow-Based Programming:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow-based_programming>

It might be a misstep, as graphical programming has been tried before without
much success. But I like the concept, and maybe new tools like multi-touch
tablets finally make it viable.

~~~
calibraxis
Flow-based programming is definitely something I'm (and some people I know)
looking at. The coordination language idea is worthwhile for language-
independence. And functional languages with lazy sequences are very similar.

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abecedarius
"Pascal really had only one new feature compared to Algol-60, pointers." --
Well, records were pretty significant too.

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perfunctory
> I realized that a pointer was just an address. Then I finally understood
> them.

This is quite interesting. It seems to be a universal pattern. Has anybody
understood pointers without first understanding memory addressing?

