Dec 4, 2023
Most accounts of the early
history of programming languages all share something in common.
They all have a sentence or two explaining how there was great
resistance to these new languages, but eventually all programmers
were won over. Progress was made, despite the forces of
counterrevolutionaries. What you won't find...
Nov 13, 2023
Have you ever opined for a
simpler time? Have you ever wanted a computer that you can
understand all the way down to the silicon? Then RCA's COSMAC might
be the architecture for you! COSMAC was a simplified computer
architecture designed in the early 70s. It's tiny, cheap, and built
to be easy to understand. But is the...
Oct 29, 2023
This episode we are looking at a
ghost of bygone days: batch processing! Before fancy terminals
peppered computer rooms, before there was a microcomputer on every
desk, there was the batch. In this non-interactive form of
computing a user could wait hours, days, or even weeks to get a
chance at computer time. Machines...
Oct 15, 2023
It's finally Spook Month here on
Advent of Computing! To kick things off I'm tackling a bit of a
mystery. Between 1972 and 1982 there is only one well documented
virus. This period is book ended with plenty of sources and, yes,
even viruses. But this decade long span of time has almost nothing!
Was this era truly safe...
Sep 24, 2023
Byte has to be one of the most
recognizable parts of the digital lexicon. It's an incantation that
can be recognized by even the uninitiated. But where does the byte
come from? Has it always existed, or did it more recently come into
being? And, more specifically, why is a byte 8 bits? Is it some
holdover from long...
