Software had to be efficient and elegant to run effectively within the limited parameters of the hardware which existed at that time.
Today it’s written sloppy as heck and they compensate by speeding up the processors.
SO TRUE!
"Spaghetti Code" had a solid basis in efforts to be ever more efficient in getting the max out of the hardware.
"Apollo 11-What We Saw" by Bill Whittle
I just watched this last night...love it. I heard someone say that the backdrop for his speaking part is part of the real original NASA Mission Control that he purchased (haven't verified if that is true or not)
Besides being (In my mind) the most eloquent conservative voice we hear today, he is a pilot and all around aviation nut!
His description of the software that was used on the LEM was brilliant and understandable, and he put it in context with the famous error message they had on their way down to the lunar surface.
One of the things I loved about it is the cultural context of the moon landings. Normally, if you were watching on PBS or one of Leftist places, "cultural context" would have meant racial discord, the Vietnam War and protests and so on.
When I say "cultural context" referring to Bill Whittle's work, his context includes...things like toys. Cap guns. Gi-Joes with the space suit and capsule, etc. Model rockets. Slide calculators.
I think part two just came out, I am going to invite a few friends over to re-watch part one with me!
Seems like there are about 10 layers of virtualization separating the written code from the hardware.
I remember reading in the 90’s that companies liked to get programmers from Russia because they had such crappy computers with little memory that they wrote very efficient code. (They probably were cheaper than our programmers too.)
I understand very little about the inner workings of computers. With the advent of GUI and the internet, I promptly forgot even what little I had learned about DOS and command-line interfacing.
But in recent years it has seemed to me that the software we used in the early days of personal computing was much more intuitive, thoughtful, user-friendly; sometimes ingenious, especially to someone like me. Even I have noticed things in some more recent programs that seemed really stupid - like a mistake that should have been caught by....someone... in the earliest testing phase.