What’s on your mind?

[Clix Pix]

<snipped>

Makes sense now. I do recall that OS X wasn’t an annual update thing until the 2010s; when iOS flourished even more with the advent of the iPad, iPod touch, and iPhone. 📱 Was Netscape created by Apple? I don’t think so. I didn’t go that far back with Apple when I was young, I was more into Nintendo games like Mario and Kirby. Back then, Apple used to host events in their stores during OS X releases, like the Night of the Panther! 🐆

An article in Wikipedia about Netscape is most interesting reading. Netscape was originally Mosaic Communications Corporation, established in 1994, by Jim Clark and Marc Andreessen. The browser was initially called Mosaic Netscape. Later it was renamed Netscape Navigator. Netscape's mascot was "Mozilla," a cartoon green lizard-like creature, but eventually he disappeared from Netscape's website. "Mozilla" was the code name for the program in the early days.

In 1999 America Online (AOL) acquired Netscape Communications. In 2003 Netscape was disbanded but the browser continued to be developed and released by AOL in 2004. The final version of Netscape Navigator was released in 2008. Mozilla.org, which became the independent Mozilla Foundation, was responsible for Netscape 7.2, which was actually based on Mozilla.

That name Mozilla is related to more than just that green lizard mascot. It sounds familiar, right? Think "Firefox."

 

[Doctor Q]

Anybody remember the Yum poster for the candy-colored fruit-flavored iMacs?

I got one of those posters, from somewhere, and put it up on the wall of the computer lab at school. I figured it was a nicely subliminal way to encourage students to favor Macs.

 

[Clix Pix]

Those yummy candy-colored iMacs and iBooks were a wonder to behold! I loved looking at the tangerine colored one. Alas, that was prior to my own conversion to the wonderful world of Apple and I never owned one. I remember being fascinated by one a friend had, but I guess I just wasn't quite ready yet for a Mac....

 

[NoBoMac]

Netscape was originally Mosaic Communications Corporation, established in 1994, by Jim Clark and Marc Andreessen.

And before that, NCSA Mosaic. My first browser, running on HP 9000/700 series hardware.

 

[Apple fanboy]

Anybody remember the Yum poster for the candy-colored fruit-flavored iMacs?

I got one of those posters, from somewhere, and put it up on the wall of the computer lab at school. I figured it was a nicely subliminal way to encourage students to favor Macs.

lol. The only computer I ever saw at school was a BBC Micro computer.

BBC Micro - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

They were awful. We had a Commadore Vic 20 at home.

VIC-20 - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

I was so lucky!

 

[bousozoku]

And before that, NCSA Mosaic. My first browser, running on HP 9000/700 series hardware.

I was using the Spyglass version, which didn't do images.

 

[Doctor Q]

The browser was initially called Mosaic Netscape.

I had a coworker who read the name wrong the first time and thereafter always called it Mosiac (mosey-ack).

 

[bousozoku]

C++ was one of the programming languages I learned before Java. It’s an older language, and I found it easy to learn how to build programs in C++ when I took it last fall semester. It’s also a foundational programming language that many computer science and engineering majors have to learn. By the way, it’s not too hard to learn.
...

When I started C, they didn't have a standard version of it, nor did Pascal. Modula-2 was a new language from Nicklas Wirth that was going to take over the world. C++ and Java came later.

I bet you've never used the emacs editor. That was the first full screen editor to make it big and used the LISP language for macros. Before I started, people had to use punch cards for their programming. Line numbers were essential to sort the cards in case you dropped them.

We take so much for granted now. Even AI can be used to check code, although editors in the 2000s were balancing braces and such.

Thankfully, my mind is on this. Yesterday, I got my semi-annual reminder about the year my mother and Steve Jobs died.

 

[mtbdudex]

^^^^
1982 programming FORTRAN on a text editor (typewriter), no screen, batch over night processing of code.
Then next day you could execute it, or fix it.
Print out every day, markup paper.
Edit on a typewriter in TED.
Yea, that’s the way it was.
Learned PL1 also.
From there it’s all flowcharts and logic really.
Syntax is syntax, could code in whatever.

You had to have it in your head.

 

[bousozoku]

^^^^
1982 programming FORTRAN on a text editor (typewriter), no screen, batch over night processing of code.
Then next day you could execute it, or fix it.
Print out every day, markup paper.
Edit on a typewriter in TED.
Yea, that’s the way it was.
Learned PL1 also.
From there it’s all flowcharts and logic really.
Syntax is syntax, could code in whatever.

You had to have it in your head.

I miss PL/I. It was so flexible and capable.

 

[DaveFromCampbelltown]

1975 - learnt Fortran, using punch cards. At least our machines printed the line number on the card, so if you dropped the stack you could easily put them back in order...

Later used Fortran F80 (Microsoft's Fortran, yes they did a Fortran), C, CBasic (written by Gordon Eubanks, later of Symantec fame, for his Navy thesis) Pascal and dabbled in Modula-2.

 

[DaveFromCampbelltown]

Ahh 25 years MacRumors .
Memory lane indeed.
20 years ago I was working with Apple on integrating their iPod and its 30pin connector into autos.
We did it on Nissan products first going thru a gateway device, I launched that in 2006.


Anyone here own a MacPortable back in 1989? I did.

Yea. That’s me 9/1984, I owed the very first Mac..

...

Never owned a Mac Portable, but did work on one for a customer.

 

[mtbdudex]

Never owned a Mac Portable, but did work on one for a customer.

They were heavy as all heck, 16 lbs.
Battery was huge .
Sold it in 1993 for $1.5k to a guy at work , got the PowerBook 180 then.
Ha, dial up modem time remember that?

 

[mtbdudex]

I miss PL/I. It was so flexible and capable.

Yes sir, lotta power.
PL meant Professional Language or?
I refuse to google it …

1975 - learnt Fortran, using punch cards. At least our machines printed the line number on the card, so if you dropped the stack you could easily put them back in order...

Later used Fortran F80 (Microsoft's Fortran, yes they did a Fortran), C, CBasic (written by Gordon Eubanks, later of Symantec fame, for his Navy thesis) Pascal and dabbled in Modula-2.

My father worked for GM 1968-1998.
He was a systems analyst, computer guy. Fisher body. He used to bring home the used up computer shiny punch tape for us kids to play with.
In my memory the yellow and dark green.

I was a Boy Scout, then joined explorer scouts 1979-1981, it was hosted by the GM tech center R& D side. 12 Mile and van dyke Warren. I learned PL1 then, in high school from the true computer nerds of GM then.
Ha, met my first girlfriend then, Laurie.
We’re still good friends 40+ years later.

 

[Clix Pix]

Ha, dial up modem time remember that?

I sure do remember the dialup modem! In the mid-1980's I was taking a few extra post-graduate courses beyond my graduate degree (MLS, Masters in Library Science). A friend had a portable/luggable which she generously lent me for some of my course assignments. To this day I still recall setting that thing (not an Apple machine, alas) up on our kitchen table and plugging a phone cord into the adjacent wall phone connection order to use it..... I set our phone receiver into the coupler on the machine, dialed the appropriate number and then watched and listened, fascinated, as the modem and the phone connection did their thing. Magic happened. In response to the prompt, I then typed in the specific login I needed in order to access the site which would get me to the database I wanted to use.

The screen on that portable/luggable showed me the list of databases and I stared at it, transfixed. Wonderingly, I said to my husband, "I've got the whole world right here on our kitchen table!"

 

[bousozoku]

Yes sir, lotta power.
PL meant Professional Language or?
I refuse to google it …





My father worked for GM 1968-1998.
He was a systems analyst, computer guy. Fisher body. He used to bring home the used up computer shiny punch tape for us kids to play with.
In my memory the yellow and dark green.

I was a Boy Scout, then joined explorer scouts 1979-1981, it was hosted by the GM tech center R& D side. 12 Mile and van dyke Warren. I learned PL1 then, in high school from the true computer nerds of GM then.
Ha, met my first girlfriend then, Laurie.
We’re still good friends 40+ years later.

PL/I = Programming Language One

I still remember Kim, Sym, and Aim 6502 computer kits that had punched tape for storage. US$999 for 2KB of Static RAM and a 6502 board.

 

[BotchQue]

^^^^
1982 programming FORTRAN on a text editor (typewriter), no screen, batch over night processing of code.
Then next day you could execute it, or fix it.
Print out every day, markup paper.

I learned FORTRAN on a keyboard in 1980, but did have a green terminal to monitor my typing for mistakes; missed punch cards by just one semester (I lived in "The Towers" at ISU, four 11-story dorms in a cluster; the end of that semester, all the CE students dumped their punchcards out the windows. It looked worse than Times Square on the morning of 1 Jan).
I really enjoyed that class, writing out flow diagrams before actually coding. My final project at the end of the trimester ran on the very first try, with only one table coming up with all Zero entries. I found the problem in under 15 minutes, changed a line of code, and it all worked!
In retirement, I often wonder how my life path would've gone, had I become a programmer rather than a Mechanical Engineer... sadly we don't get to try again (or maybe we do?)

 

[The Clark]

1975 - learnt Fortran, using punch cards. At least our machines printed the line number on the card, so if you dropped the stack you could easily put them back in order...

Later used Fortran F80 (Microsoft's Fortran, yes they did a Fortran), C, CBasic (written by Gordon Eubanks, later of Symantec fame, for his Navy thesis) Pascal and dabbled in Modula-2.

What are your thoughts on modern languages and frameworks? I imagine back then you had to be very mindful of your memory usage.

 

[goldmac2006]

Anybody remember the Yum poster for the candy-colored fruit-flavored iMacs?

I got one of those posters, from somewhere, and put it up on the wall of the computer lab at school. I figured it was a nicely subliminal way to encourage students to favor Macs.

I recall that. Here’s an updated version featuring the new iMacs with Apple silicon:

https://www.reddit.com/r/mac/comments/mxd0xt/recreated_the_iconic_yum_poster_but_with_the_new

It’s a clever idea to entice people into the Apple ecosystem! Let’s promote more tech students to embrace Apple products. .

An article in Wikipedia about Netscape is most interesting reading. Netscape was originally Mosaic Communications Corporation, established in 1994, by Jim Clark and Marc Andreessen. The browser was initially called Mosaic Netscape. Later it was renamed Netscape Navigator. Netscape's mascot was "Mozilla," a cartoon green lizard-like creature, but eventually he disappeared from Netscape's website. "Mozilla" was the code name for the program in the early days.

In 1999 America Online (AOL) acquired Netscape Communications. In 2003 Netscape was disbanded but the browser continued to be developed and released by AOL in 2004. The final version of Netscape Navigator was released in 2008. Mozilla.org, which became the independent Mozilla Foundation, was responsible for Netscape 7.2, which was actually based on Mozilla.

That name Mozilla is related to more than just that green lizard mascot. It sounds familiar, right? Think "Firefox."

Thanks for sharing that. It was the OG company which turned out to be Firefox browser right?

When I started C, they didn't have a standard version of it, nor did Pascal. Modula-2 was a new language from Nicklas Wirth that was going to take over the world. C++ and Java came later.

I bet you've never used the emacs editor. That was the first full screen editor to make it big and used the LISP language for macros. Before I started, people had to use punch cards for their programming. Line numbers were essential to sort the cards in case you dropped them.

We take so much for granted now. Even AI can be used to check code, although editors in the 2000s were balancing braces and such.

Thankfully, my mind is on this. Yesterday, I got my semi-annual reminder about the year my mother and Steve Jobs died.

The IDE I primarily use is Visual Studio, not the code editor you mentioned above. Once I get a Mac, it’ll be Xcode. I’m still thinking about getting a MacBook Pro that’s worth the money. Remember punch cards from the days before the Apple IIe? C is older than C++, Objective-C was before Swift, and now I’m learning G-code and starting on discrete structures. These are just a few of the things I’m doing to prepare for my transfer from college to university. Alongside finishing one last GE and a physics class.

Yes sir, lotta power.
PL meant Professional Language or?
I refuse to google it …





My father worked for GM 1968-1998.
He was a systems analyst, computer guy. Fisher body. He used to bring home the used up computer shiny punch tape for us kids to play with.
In my memory the yellow and dark green.

I was a Boy Scout, then joined explorer scouts 1979-1981, it was hosted by the GM tech center R& D side. 12 Mile and van dyke Warren. I learned PL1 then, in high school from the true computer nerds of GM then.
Ha, met my first girlfriend then, Laurie.
We’re still good friends 40+ years later.

Wait so these tapes do y’all put them into a disk drive?

 

[bousozoku]

...

The IDE I primarily use is Visual Studio, not the code editor you mentioned above. Once I get a Mac, it’ll be Xcode. I’m still thinking about getting a MacBook Pro that’s worth the money. Remember punch cards from the days before the Apple IIe? C is older than C++, Objective-C was before Swift, and now I’m learning G-code and starting on discrete structures. These are just a few of the things I’m doing to prepare for my transfer from college to university. Alongside finishing one last GE and a physics class.



Wait so these tapes do y’all put them into a disk drive?

The first actual IDE on a small computer was Code Warrior for Mac about the time of PowerPC machines, although Borland's Turbo Pascal had a menu for the editor and compiler in 1984. Later, when Turbo Pascal became Delphi and C++ arrived, they had a very good IDE. The big machines had a much more structured way to handle development since you would be using multiple programming languages.

I've got Visual Studio on my Mac but it gives me headaches after using Borland (Embarcadero now) products for so long.

The good thing now is that almost no one touches Assembly Language. At 1.79 Mhz processor speed, it was important, but now, sloppy code still works reasonably well.

 

[scubachap]

Anybody remember the Yum poster for the candy-colored fruit-flavored iMacs?

I got one of those posters, from somewhere, and put it up on the wall of the computer lab at school. I figured it was a nicely subliminal way to encourage students to favor Macs.

I certainly do... it's not all about what's under the hood is it? The multiple candy colours was breakthrough in many ways, as while we all thought they were a bit rubbish in terms of spec suddenly they started popping up in trendy reception areas everywhere and suddenly everyone starting noticing Apple.

Mind, I've never thought Apple have been able to make a decent mouse but the ones that shipped with them were a low point (IMHO) even for Apple...

We used to deal with a repro house regularly and it's boss (who used to wear a suit and looked quite straight laced) took to carrying proudly one of these around with him - it was all a bit odd at times.

 

[goldmac2006]

The first actual IDE on a small computer was Code Warrior for Mac about the time of PowerPC machines, although Borland's Turbo Pascal had a menu for the editor and compiler in 1984. Later, when Turbo Pascal became Delphi and C++ arrived, they had a very good IDE. The big machines had a much more structured way to handle development since you would be using multiple programming languages.

I've got Visual Studio on my Mac but it gives me headaches after using Borland (Embarcadero now) products for so long.

The good thing now is that almost no one touches Assembly Language. At 1.79 Mhz processor speed, it was important, but now, sloppy code still works reasonably well.

So was that the one most Mac devs used before Xcode?

Also @Scepticalscribe blood oranges are on my mind too. Just got them from a farmers market event yesterday.

 

[mtbdudex]

HyperCard .. remember when Apple released it?

They were so so close to inventing the www without realizing it ….

Links, data sharing … all of it … but within HyperCard stacks not across web addresses..

 

[Mousse]

I bet you've never used the emacs editor. That was the first full screen editor to make it big and used the LISP language for macros.

When I took Beginning Programming in college, the prof was old school. He had us using vi. Emac was new at the time, so he considered it inferior. Real programmers uses vi. Okay Professor.🥹👍

The first actual IDE on a small computer was Code Warrior for Mac about the time of PowerPC machines,

Metrowerks. That was my first IDE too. Gawd, coding became infinitely easier after moving away from vi and BBEdit. What "real programmers" use. I didn't have what it takes to be a real programmer because I like my pizza hot and my drink of choice is Dr. Pepper, not Mountain Dew.*
Besides the only programming language I learned were Pascal and C.

*Mountain Dew was the drink of choice because the programmer's credo back in the day, "Yellow in, yellow out."

 

[bousozoku]

When I took Beginning Programming in college, the prof was old school. He had us using vi. Emac was new at the time, so he considered it inferior. Real programmers uses vi. Okay Professor.🥹👍

Metrowerks. That was my first IDE too. Gawd, coding became infinitely easier after moving away from vi and BBEdit. What "real programmers" use. I didn't have what it takes to be a real programmer because I like my pizza hot and my drink of choice is Dr. Pepper, not Mountain Dew.*
Besides the only programming language I learned were Pascal and C.

*Mountain Dew was the drink of choice because the programmer's credo back in the day, "Yellow in, yellow out."

emacs is so much better. Mountain Dew is so helpful in the middle of the night.

I first used microemacs on the Atari ST but I opened vi (which was just a pretty shell for ed) and I spent about two minutes and closed it, and never tried it again. I thought that ed was easier to remember because of my familiarity with edlin on early PC-DOS/MS-DOS.