[ale] Engineering Archaeology

Sun Jan 11 13:22:00 EST 2026

"They would instead have no need for what I’d forgotten (for the most part) and eventually would learn things I’d never learn."

I think we really need to be selective on what we do and do not need to learn.   I advocate for programmers to learn something about computer architecture, including some type of assembly language.  This makes it easier for them to learn how a compiler or an operating system works, both of which can have dramatic affects on their program's execution.

I belonged to USENIX since before it was created (it was called "/usr/group") and I was the program chair for the first "USELINUX" conference track (1997) at the USENIX Annual Technical Conference (ATC) in San Diego.

At that conference the Linux speaker gave a great talk on the implementation of malloc(2) to the USENIX people.  They talked about all the studies they had done to tune malloc(2) to be efficient in different loads.   After about fifty minutes of presentation they asked for questions and a revered USENIX member, Andrew Hume, stood up and said "Great talk, but I will point out that we had just about the same talk twenty years ago, came up with just about the same conclusions, but we had actual measurements published to back them up".

The silence in the room was deafening.

md

> On 01/10/2026 5:50 PM EST Jeff Lightner via Ale <ale at ale.org> wrote:
>  
>  
> 
> As a young person more than once I’d heard of someone insulting someone else by saying "I’ve forgotten more than you’ll ever know!”
> 
> In my later years when I would speak to people about “the old days” and things such as RS232-C and/or Hayes modem commands I realized that while it was likely true I’d forget much of the detail it didn’t mean younger folks would never know more than I’d forgotten.   They would instead have no need for what I’d forgotten (for the most part) and eventually would learn things I’d never learn. 
> 
> More than once I’ve told people the reason I liked “System Administration” was that although my job titles might have changed the basic mission was the same however the knowledge and skills used evolved dramatically.   It meant I was constantly learning.
> 
> I contrasted that to my former accounting career.   It took a special mindset and intelligence to do that but it became “routine” as it didn’t change much.  I once told a boss “I feel both bored and burned out and it doesn’t seem reasonable that both would be true.
> 
> Retiring systems is like pulling teeth in many places.   Long after we migrated our main Production systems off HP-UX to Linux there was one application a manager insisted we keep running to allow access to history.   The only reason we finally got rid of those servers was because we had to move out of our original offices which included our own data center.   The new offices didn’t so we were moving much of our equipment to a remote data center.   We told that manager we wouldn’t have room for those HP-UX servers.
> 
> P.S.  HP-UX was my favorite UNIX variant.   IMO it was much superior to both AIX and Solaris.  I hated it when HP dumped the PA-RISC chips in favor of Intel based chips.
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> From: Ale <ale-bounces at ale.org> On Behalf Of jon.maddog.hall--- via Ale
> Sent: Saturday, January 10, 2026 2:39 PM
> To: jimkinney at gmail.com; Atlanta Linux Enthusiasts <ale at ale.org>
> Cc: jon.maddog.hall at gmail.com <jonhall80 at comcast.net>; Jim Kinney <jim.kinney at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [ale] Engineering Archaeology
> 
>  
> 
> I remember that DEC often had "retirement" sessions for products that discussed:
> 
> o do we have any active support contracts?
> o how does this retirement affect other still active products?
> 
> o other things I have forgotten
> 
> I remember attending one of these sessions for "DECtape" (also known as "LincTape") a little round reel of tape that I LOVED when I was a student in 1969.   Programs that would take 30 minutes to load from paper tape would load in seconds using LinkTape, and you could store huge amounts of data on it.
> 
> As I said, I used this as a student in 1969, on a DEC Linc-8 computer, a blending of DEC's Linc computer and a PDP-8, but I know they were still active on PDP-7s, PDP-11s and PDP-8s (and probably more machines).   They were affordable, rugged and could easily fit in your (large) pocket.
> 
> 
> Years later came the "retirement" meeting for DECtape, and as people around the room representing various operating systems and service groups (including Ultrix) raised their hands and said that they were ready to pull the plug I realized that none of these people were OLD ENOUGH to actually have used DECtape.
> 
> So when it came to me, I told them what DECtape meant for a 19-year old university kid, and asked for a moment of silence for DECtape....and they gave it.
> 
> Unbeknownst  to me there was a person sitting in the back of the room taking notes for a book about DEC and its products who copied, almost word for word, what I said and a couple of years later in that book my story appeared.   Still later, in the computer museum that DEC had in Marlboro (which donated a lot of equipment and documentation to the Computer History Museum in California) there was an instance of a PDP-11 along with a DECtape display, and there on a panel were my words again.
> 
> One of my fears about e-books, the web and documentation that can disappear as easy as "rm -r *", is that we will lose a LOT of this information and not know where we came from and how we got here.
> 
> md
> 
> > 
> > On 01/10/2026 12:29 PM EST Jim Kinney via Ale <ale at ale.org mailto:ale at ale.org> wrote:
> > 
> >  
> > 
> >  
> > 
> > Ha! The project book "What this goddamn this is, how it works, and what we thinking when we built it" is NEVER part of the project and should be the first thing done!
> > 
> >  
> > 
> > --
> > James P. Kinney III
> > 
> > Every time you stop a school, you will have to build a jail. What you gain at one end you lose at the other. It's like feeding a dog on his own tail. It won't fatten the dog.
> > - Speech 11/23/1900 Mark Twain
> > 
> > http://heretothereideas.blogspot.com/
> > 
> >  
> > 
> > On Sat, Jan 10, 2026, 12:23 PM lollipopman691 via Ale <ale at ale.org mailto:ale at ale.org> wrote:
> > 
> > > 
> > > Heh heh.  A very amusing essay. I personally myself set up wiki webs in two of the jobs I had over the years,and contributed extensively to others I found already in place. They're my personal favorite way of preserving this sort of thing.
> > > 
> > > https://landley.net/history/mirror/institutional_memory.html
> > > 
> > > -- CHS
> > > 
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