13 Apr
2020
13 Apr
'20
8:10 p.m.
Showing the usefulness of that, back around 1985 I was in a training
session at Unisys and the instructor told us about his time as a
programmer in Vietnam during wartime. He was part of a group that
modified software for artillery fire control systems in the field, and
each time one of the soldier programmers got orders to return home he
would leave an easter egg in the code. A few days later a message might
pop up saying, "Drinking a beer at home watching tv, wish you were
here??" or little things along those lines. The instructor said one
guy, however, went into the code and globally replaced variable names
with combinations of 1, l, 0, O. Since the 1/l and 0/O were displayed
identically, the programmers didn't find the prank funny. Our
instructor said as he traveled the US training groups, he hoped he would
find the guy. 10 or 15 years later he was still more than a tad angry.
All for lack of slashes and serifs.
Incidentally, living in Austria I was surprised to see ones commonly
written looking nearly like upside down Vs.
Mike Markowski
On 4/13/20 8:38 AM, Clem Cole wrote:
FWIW -- I still slash both zeros and sevens. I was
probably 12 when I
was taught that trick, plus the print head of an ASR33 slashed zero's
and 1, l, 7 were all distinct. So sat the time, it seemed cool and
advanced. Then it just became a habit, and as we know, old habits are
difficult to change and frankly, I never saw the reason to stop. My
handwriting is a bit of a mess as it is, so anything I do the make it
clear has always been considered a good thing by people around me.🤔
On Mon, Apr 13, 2020 at 7:31 AM David Barto <david(a)kdbarto.org
<mailto:david@kdbarto.org>> wrote:
Yes. When I took my first programming class at UCSD they
specifically went through the numbers and alphabet showing the mark
up and being very careful to go over 0, 1, 7 and O multiple times.
I’ve stopped slashing my 0, and I still slash my 7. IDK why I
stopped the one and not the other.
A long time ago, in a universe(ity) far far away.
David