Chris Browne wrote:
> uwe@xxxxxxxxx ("Uwe C. Schroeder") writes:
> > On Saturday 08 October 2005 21:07, Chris Browne wrote:
> >> 2. The code base was pretty old, pretty creaky, and has a *really*
> >> heavy learning curve.
> >>
> >> It was pretty famous as being *really* difficult to build; throw
> >> together such things as:
> >> - It uses a custom set of build tools that were created for a
> >> mainframe environment and sorta hacked into Python
> >> - Naming conventions for files, variables, and functions combine
> >> pseudo-German with an affinity for 8 character names that are
> >> anything but mnemonic. (Think: "Germans developing on MVS.")
> >> - I seem to recall there being a Pascal translator to transform
> >> some of the code into C++...
> >
> > WOW - careful now. I'm german - but then, there's a reason why I
> > immigrated to the US :-)
>
> I'm 1/4 German, and a couple brothers married German girls, so I'm not
> trying to be mean, by any stretch.
>
> The bad Procrustean part is the "8 character mainframe" aspect, as it
> takes things that might have been mnemonic, at least to those knowing
> German, and distills things down in size so as to lose even that.
>
> It truly *was* Germans developing on MVS (or TSO or OS/360 or such)...
Just to clarify, directory names are single letters, and file names are
numbers --- I kid you not.
--
Bruce Momjian | http://candle.pha.pa.us
pgman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx | (610) 359-1001
+ If your life is a hard drive, | 13 Roberts Road
+ Christ can be your backup. | Newtown Square, Pennsylvania 19073
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