| 28 Jul 2021 |
 myrkraverk | You can try asking about it on comp.compilers, and/or alt.folklore.computers | 22:56:35 |
| myrkraverk | Not sure where else you can find old timers who might know. | 22:56:54 |
 JimBalcomb | I did not realize those places still existed. | 22:57:25 |
| myrkraverk | I have a book, about the history of fortran, but I have not read enough to know if the term comes up there. | 22:57:30 |
| myrkraverk | I might see if the term is in the index. | 22:57:48 |
| myrkraverk | Just, to avoid confusion, try to make it clear that you're asking about the origin of the term, and not what it means. | 22:58:35 |
| myrkraverk | [wherever you put your question.] | 22:58:43 |
| JimBalcomb | Yes, the origin, as I am now (finally) clear on the meaning. | 22:59:06 |
| myrkraverk | the retrocomputing stack overflow, or regular stack overflow might also be good places to ask, but I'm not sure if you'll find many historical researchers there. | 22:59:22 |
| JimBalcomb | I have done a fair bit of googling, with setting the maximum date, but everything I have found so far seems to assume you are in-the-know. | 23:00:07 |
| myrkraverk | ^ I don't use these places much, because I've found the quests for glory less than ideal motivators. | 23:00:13 |
| JimBalcomb | I also did not realize there was an SO for retrocomputing. | 23:00:44 |
| myrkraverk | Yeah, google has been mostly useless to me, for my adventures in retroprogramming. | 23:01:05 |
| myrkraverk | and historical research. | 23:01:09 |
| myrkraverk | MichalN, of os2museum, is on #watcom on IRC, the OFTC network. He knows a lot, but not everything. | 23:01:58 |
| JimBalcomb | Indeed. Google has a hard time with the idea that I am not searching for what everyone else is searching for and/or I just want all the possible results regardless of whehter the algorithm thinks they are good. | 23:02:57 |
| myrkraverk | yeah. | 23:03:21 |
| JimBalcomb | * Indeed. Google has a hard time with the idea that I am not searching for what everyone else is searching for and/or I just want all the possible results regardless of whether the algorithm thinks they are good. | 23:03:38 |
| myrkraverk | I have considered writing my own search engine for retroprogramming -- but that'd be a nontrivial task and I don't relish the idea of parsing html; even with ready made tools. | 23:04:08 |
| JimBalcomb | I have been trying to code something up around the Google Search API to get around that, but I can not seem to clarify my thoughts / focus hard enough on it. | 23:04:30 |
| JimBalcomb | Mind you, I am the same person who has also now spent 12+ hours trying to figure out why the IP starts at 06h and the data segment starts at 0Ah. | 23:09:11 |
| JimBalcomb | i.e., I have no skill for just getting things done. | 23:09:51 |
| JimBalcomb | FWIW, the BeatifulSoup package for Python has this on total lock-down. And, the API truly is beautiful. (you just gotta deal with Python) | 23:14:05 |
| JimBalcomb | I regularly use it as an intermediary process in work I do in C, C++, and R. | 23:15:12 |
| myrkraverk | I'll keep it in mind. I do not like python. I used it for a nontrivial project a decade ago, and I learned to hate it back then. | 23:16:02 |
| JimBalcomb | Yeah, it is super frustrating. | 23:16:46 |
| JimBalcomb | Arguably, because of the pleathora of skidz it really is the best at web-stuff, though. | 23:17:29 |
| JimBalcomb | * Arguably, because of the plethora of skidz it really is the best at web-stuff, though. | 23:17:35 |
| JimBalcomb | But, I continue to think that the advent of Node.JS is going to, effectively, eventually, destroy the reason for Python to exist. | 23:19:14 |
| myrkraverk | the fortran history book doesn't have an index | 23:50:50 |
