Hot take: I feel like a lot of the original value of language standards was to unite multiple proprietary implementations of compilers/runtimes/etc. from different vendors, each of which had incentives to add non standard features to attract customers and keep them locked in. This has been significantly diminished in the last decade or two now that most languages have high quality open source implementations - now you can simply port your compiler of choice to the platform you need.
I used to open up mods (I seem to recall them being in "PBO" files) and tweaked around the script code to change things and make my own weapons and such. Also a formative experience on my path to becoming a developer.
Aside from a few utilities, relatively little of OS/400 was written in RPG. Originally, most of it was written in two different dialects of PL/I. Some Modula-2 was added into the mix, and most of the lower levels were rewritten in C++ when they switched to PPC processors.
I agree with the overall point of the article, but I feel compelled to be _that guy_ and point out that most of IBM's systems programming involved various dialects of PL/I, not Fortran, and they went through a bunch of different iterations on those compilers and their code generators.
Do you have a reference for this? Looking around, I see it being beaten by other ARM SBCs, and even low end Intel devices.
Many years ago, I measured performance per watt of the original Raspberry Pi when they were still relatively new. The performance per watt lagged behind even a beefy Intel box since the original Raspi was so slow that it destroyed any gain it got from using so little power.
I loved Opera until they got rid of their in-house browser engine and became a Chromium fork, losing a lot of the functionality and UX I liked about the older versions. Ever since then, I have been very reluctant to use a closed source browser, since I don't want to have to go through another rug-pull of having a company completely change a browser without ability for the community to make a fork.
I use Google daily, and yet I can't remember the last time I used their search box - all of my searching has been done through the browser URL bar for a long, long time. I wonder if similar changes are being applied to the Chrome URL bar?
The "lightweight" nature of OpenBSD is a matter of perspective - if you are happy with OpenBSD's feature set, then it's a plus. On the other hand, FreeBSD has a lot of additional features, including ZFS, which may be of interest. The last I checked, FreeBSD was more performant in various benchmarks, particularly regarding multi-core performance.
I had a big problem with BSODs caused by Nvidia drivers. Of course, you could argue that this was Nvidia's fault, not Vista's, but this was somewhat academic. I moved back to XP (and also started using Linux) and all these problems went away, and I got a lot more out of my RAM to boot.
They were developed by completely different teams.
As an aside - as someone who used ME back in the day, I feel like I honestly had more problems with Vista. ME was a downgrade from 98SE for sure, but I don't remember it being the same level of performance and reliability degradation that I saw going from XP to Vista pre-SP2.
For me, search integrated into the start menu was a major quality of life improvement. Particularly the ability to hit the Windows key and type the name of an application. Strictly speaking, this was introduced in Vista, but I feel like Windows 7 added a lot of useful polish to the Windows Vista style of UI.
I otherwise agree that the older Win 2k era UI was pretty much an ideal UI. The whole "frutiger aero" look did not age well.
The early 3270 keyboards (and the other IBM keyboards from the mid 70s up to the early 80s) are some of the most pleasant keyboards I've typed on in terms of key weighting and tactile feel. The length of travel is comparable to modern mechanical keyboards. The downside is how tall and aggressively angled the keyboards are, which are very far from modern ergonomic standards.
On later generations of IBM terminal keyboard, you'll see | on the shift-1 position, and a separate key with the broken-bar (¦) symbol. For example, on this keyboard, the broken bar is below the backspace key along with the \ character. https://sharktastica.co.uk/image?id=qhTU8QvD
The reason for the two different types of bar/pipe characters, and why the original IBM PC keyboards only had the broken bar on the keyboard, involves a particularly arcane footnote of history relating to supporting the PL/I language on ASCII terminals: https://www.os2museum.com/wp/a-wunderbar-story/
Nitpick: The terminology used by IBM on the 3270 family (including the 3277 whose keyboard you shared) was "Tab" and "Back tab", not "Next field" and "Previous field".
Your memory is correct, and it's interesting to note that on the IBM terminal keyboards, the Enter key was marked "Enter", and the return/new line key was marked "↵". On the classic IBM PC keyboards such as the Model M, the Enter key is marked "↵ Enter". I believe IBM chose this to convey that the Enter key on the PC was both an "Enter" _and_ "Return" key in one. As you say though - individual applications got to chose what that meant in practice, leading to inconsistent behavior.
I find this story odd because IBM was consistent with their keyboard nomenclature across multiple products, and the 3270 series mainframe terminals used the Tab key, located in the same place where you would find a tab key on a modern keyboard, to move the cursor to the next field.
As an aside, it's worth noting that moving between fields was important enough on IBM terminals that they had a dedicated "back tab" key located on the opposite end of the keyboard to the tab key. On the original IBM PC, they decided to combine both functions into a single key. As a result, the tab key on the classic PC keyboard features the symbols for both forwards tab and back tab on the same key, the back tab symbol being on top to indicate that you need to hold down shift to use that function.
EDIT: The 5250 series terminals used the terms "Field Advance" and "Field Backspace" instead of Tab and Back Tab, but otherwise they used the same symbol on the keys, and the keys were located in roughly the same position as the 3270 series. Reference: https://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/ibm/5291/GA21-9409-0_5291_Disp...
Sad to hear this, one of my first mechanical keyboards was a Filco TKL. At one point in time, it was my go-to "safe recommendation" for a keyboard. Since that point in time, the Majestouch keyboards only received incremental improvements, whereas the likes of Keychron completely overtook them on almost all criteria.
> But I wonder how it seems to people who understand how it works?
As someone who mostly understands what's going on - It does not seem like wizardry to me, but I am very impressed that the author figured out the long list of arcane details needed to make it work.