Explain your username.

[XTRXTR]

Starting to sound like "WHO's on First"

That's the WEF slogan, not the WTO but I get your point.

When I took my ANSI C class at CU it was all about saving resources, making succinct code, using pointers etc. My Computer Architecture class I had to build an ALU, and then there was the machine language class. It made you understand how all this code really boils down control flags which flips bits in a specific order to get an operation, and there was operational order that had to be followed, embedded microprocessor design.

 

[XTRXTR]

What blows my mind is that many modern flip phones have more computing power than the lunar module/lander.

Those guys had balls of steel.

That lunar module had like 1200 operational control codes but of course to get one thing to do what you need sometimes many operational commands had to be processed to get your result.

Did you know that the Apollo 11 Lunar module was cutoff from communications and the lander had to be piloted by hand to the moon surface. It had to do with one of the astronauts was trying to get updates from the computer but each time he entered a command it defaulted to shut off the antenna. So no telemetry data was being accepted. It took a couple decades to figure why that happened. Very interesting video about it on YouTube. It is amazing they survived that landing.

 

[PelliX]

I think it's important for people writing code to understand that and to have done something similar at least once, even today with all the high level abstraction. I never learned any of it classically so I can't really comment on how it's taught, but I do see a generation or two of devs who treat resource utilization as an afterthought rather than a core part of the task at hand. Even in recent years I've often enough sat there and refactored code for microcontrollers because I was X bytes over some limit.

While I'm yelling at clouds, what I also miss thesedays are good old functional and technical designs for code. This practice seems to be deemed archaic and I just can't reconcile that with reality.

 

[CoyotesGator]

Somehow this Gen X knows how to take a signal and use vacuum tubes and transformers to create the desired output but has no remembrance of the computer writing I did in the early 1980's. I must have have been unplugged and not restarted years ago.

 

[XTRXTR]

I found this interesting if you have some time this presentation explains all the code issues I spoke of earlier concerning the Apollo 11 lunar Module telemetry and communication blackout during the lunar landing. It is detailed so you can understand the insanity and the near disaster.

The story never told by NASA, how close to a major failure Apollo 11 was.

 

[Don O]

A real challenge back in the day was building your own dedicated computer using bit slice processors. I worked with a senior engineer in 1978 who designed a 56 bit wide, 4 channel FFT processor for doing voice recognition. We used AMD 2901 4 bit slice processors. So it was 14 processors (14 x 4) that processed the 56 bit wide custom designed "instruction" that controlled a boat load of logic to perform 4 channels of an FFT algorithm every 5 milliseconds.

Now you can do this with a $25 Alexa.

 

[Frodebro]

Did you know that the Apollo 11 Lunar module was cutoff from communications and the lander had to be piloted by hand to the moon surface. It had to do with one of the astronauts was trying to get updates from the computer but each time he entered a command it defaulted to shut off the antenna. So no telemetry data was being accepted. It took a couple decades to figure why that happened. Very interesting video about it on YouTube. It is amazing they survived that landing.

There was a reason NASA recruited so many test pilots back then. Big clanking brass ones and absolute calm under pressure.

 

[JeffB]

There was a reason NASA recruited so many test pilots back then. Big clanking brass ones and absolute calm under pressure.

And many of them were former combat experienced fighter pilots. I guess they saw the mercury/gemini/apollo missions as the next adrenaline rush.

 

[JeffB]

I found this interesting if you have some time this presentation explains all the code issues I spoke of earlier concerning the Apollo 11 lunar Module telemetry and communication blackout during the lunar landing. It is detailed so you can understand the insanity and the near disaster.

The story never told by NASA, how close to a major failure Apollo 11 was.

Thanks for this- will hafta check it out!