In 1977, A Computer Programmer Fixed a Massive Bug — And Created an Existential Crisis
In 1977, A Computer Programmer Fixed a Massive Bug — And Created an Existential Crisis
Here’s what vintage typesetting, defense software, and the Apple Lisa have to do with a ubiquitous computing feature.
Non-Pocket version, because screw that enshittified plugin gone feral. Give me back Read It Later, you cowards.
The Apple II was one of the first personal computers to integrate a blinking cursor into its systems.
The Apple I also had a blinking cursor. (And would support blinking characters in general, but I think the video hardware as-designed ignores when the CPU tries to use it.)
At first, the cursor was stuck to the bottom of your text document, Haigh says. But the invention of the mouse in 1964 by Douglas Engelbart and the addition of cursor or arrow keys to keyboards made it easier for typists to move through the document with ease.
The history of cursor keys is also a whole thing. I only know about the Apple I via modern emulator nonsense, so when I wrote the only action game on the platform, people with repro hardware couldn't play it. It ran just fine... but the machine has no left or right keys. A quick hack checked for < and > instead.
enshittified ???
Yeah. It was originally a simple bookmark-ish plugin - you'd save a tab for later by shoving it into a list, and opening it back up removed it from that list. Then it rebranded into a whole cloud-based thing where you needed a goddamn account just to access the list you already made on your own computer. And it was "helpfully" backing up anything newly shoved. Then they bribed their way into becoming part of Firefox, breaking the actual plugin for anyone still using it for its intended fucking purpose. And hey guess what now they're on some Facebook shit where other people's articles are hosted on their website, to get
advertised atrecommended to you.There was a neat thing I liked and it betrayed me in half a dozen ways to make some jackass money. Enshittification applies.
Did anyone else find that article incredibly disjointed and hard to read?
They never seemed to mention a “bug” or an “existential crisis” either.
All of BDG’s sites are pretty shit.
“I remember him telling me the reason behind the blinking cursor, and it was simple,” Charles “Chuck” Kiesling’s son writes. “He said there was nothing on the screen to let you know where the cursor was in the first place. So he wrote up the code for it so he would know where he was ready to type on the Cathode Ray Tube.”
The blinking, it turns out, is simply a way to catch the coders’ attention and stand apart from a sea of text.
Came for the headline, educated myself about typesetting machines on wikipedia after reading the article. Headline was a bit misleading.