Christopher Biggs on Nostr: ❝ And there is one disconcerting thing about working with a computer—it’s ...

❝ And there is one disconcerting thing about working with a computer—it’s likely to talk back to you. You make some tiny mistake in your FORTRAN language—putting a letter in the wrong column, say, or omitting a comma—and the 360 comes to a screeching halt and prints out rude remarks, like “ILLEGAL FORMAT,” or “UNKNOWN PROBLEM,” or, if the man who wrote the program was really feeling nasty that morning, “WHAT’S THE “MATTER STUPID? CAN’T YOU READ?”

Everyone who uses a computer frequently has had, from time to time, a mad desire to attack the precocious abacus with an axe.
❞

Excerpt from
“Ignition! An informal history of liquid rocket propellants”
John D. Clark, 1972