Re: DEC Fortran
My final year project at Uni was a mathematical model of the human eye at low light intensity. Like the article it relied on loop within loops. The university computer was a DEC 10 and the program was written in Fortran.
I spent a lot of time ensuring that the program would run to completion without intervention. Unlike my fellow student who would babysit their programs overnight.
However my program consumed 12 hours of run time and was terminated. I got a "see me" email.
I was worried, this was my final year project.
They didn't bollock me but suggested that I sent my program to Manchester University . Not knowing about modems I thought I had to send my program by post but was put straight on this.
After a compile failure a CDC (Control Data)machine executed my program in less than a second.
This taught me that you had to program to the machine, not try to make it do things it wasn't built to do.
So for example I have:
Used the Transputers ability to do 2D memory manipulation and paralleled processing and CPU core linking to to do image processing for world class astronomical telescopes.
Produced a minimal memory and CPU cycle timesliceing OS to run experiments on the Cassini Huygens lander.
Programmed SHARC DSPs to operate on multiple audio streams concurrently using the SIMD mode.
Normal programming makes me weep, it's sledgehammer all the way, no artistry, no finesse.
I sit and wonder WTF when it takes several seconds for a word document to load.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
