this post was submitted on 13 Oct 2025
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Programmer Humor
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Physical, human-legible media, like punch cards
"human legible"
Have you looked at a punch card? I like some assembly, but the punch card is just dots. They blur together until all you see are holes and more holes and structure has lost all meaning.
more legible than a ssd for humans
So, do you work with minimum spec hardware, or are you just a masochist?
Por que no los DOS? (Pun intended)
But really it's been two things. I've had to adapt algorithms to some extremely ancient hardware that had another twenty years planned service, and I've had to work on robot operating systems where timing of operations is extremely important
DOS? That's ancient technology! Who still uses that relic!? Lol.
I once saw an application, I think some sort of old computer emulator tool, on a smartphone, read a punch card using the camera. Which made me think, QR codes are a difficult for humans to read way to put code onto a physical sheet of paper and them pass it to a computer, just like punch cards were, when it comes to technology, there is nothing new under the sun, and on a cycle, everything old is eventually new again.
The very first computers were programmed using physical switches and buttons. Punched cards came later. Being a programmer in those days was a lot harder than it is now!