Cottage Computer Programming (1984)

https://www.atariarchives.org/deli/cottage_computer_programming.php

by lioeters • 11 days ago

42 10 11 days ago

ylee2• 6 days ago

What Lutus talks about exists even when it's not for anyone else.

I have never been paid to write code, and my formal CS education is limited to AP Computer Science, and a one-credit Java class in college. I wrote 20 years ago a backup script implementing Mike Rubel's insight <http://www.mikerubel.org/computers/rsync_snapshots/> about using `rsync` and hard links to create snapshots backups. It's basically my own version of `rsnapshot`. I have deployed it across several of my machines. Every so often I fix a bug or add a feature. Do I need to do it given `rsnapshot`'s existence? No. Is it fun to work on it? Yes.

(I've over the years restored individual files/directories often enough from the resulting backups to have reasonable confidence in the script's effectiveness, but of course one never knows for certain until the day everything gets zapped.)

cestith• 6 days ago

I’ve worked somewhere that used Snapback, and that’s also from Mike Rubel’s writings.

https://metacpan.org/dist/Snapback2/view/scripts/snapback2.P...

The 2 is I think because an earlier incarnation was by Art Mulder. There is also a Python implementation by apparently yet another person, which appears to be independently inspired by Mike Rubel’s writings.

https://github.com/diegocortassa/snapback

There are also rsyncbackup, rsyncmachine, https://rsnapshot.org/, https://github.com/jonaslu/rsyncrotatingbackup (inspired by http://www.dbourget.com/software/remote-backup.pl), and several more with seemingly the same original inspiration.

_doctor_love• 6 days ago

What do you do for work if it's not writing code? I'm always fascinated by the non-paid-professional-programmers who frequent HN.

ylee2• 6 days ago

I worked in tech investment banking for a decade out of college, and now work for myself.

I majored in history and Spanish at Columbia, which is associated with at least two other people who have had notable computer-related careers/sidelines and eminent non computer-related careers: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eben_Moglen> and <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Mendelson>. (Not that I would put myself at their level.)

EvanAnderson• 6 days ago

Paul Lutus recently commented in this thread that linked this (and other) articles of the era: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48830191

II2II• 6 days ago

Thank you for linking that since it sort of answered one of my questions: what would a person who lived in the backwoods of Oregon to escape the distractions of the world think about computers bringing the distractions of the world into their home?

wumms• 6 days ago

computers take over a lot of the trivial thinking we do, freeing us to be creative

adamgordonbell2• 6 days ago

This being posted years ago led me to reach out to Paul and ultimately interview him.

It was super fun! You can shoot him an email from his website and he's definitely worth chatting with. He's on hacker news sometimes as well.

He has many wild stories! Steve Jobs melting his software by leaving the disk out in the sun. Being homeless. Working at the JPL. I think he had a hard childhood and went his own way.

https://corecursive.com/remote-developer/

lioeters• 6 days ago

Oh wow, what a treat, an entire interview with the author! I posted this link because I loved his story of living in an off-grid mountain cabin with a computer, programming Apple Writer. After the success of the software, it sounded like he bought a little private airplane ("Mooney 201"), and the description of him flying along the Oregon coast stayed in my mind, what a character.

It feels like the tech scene used to be populated by more people like him, who didn't quite fit in with society and had strong personalities. I'm sure they still exist, just harder to recognize in the bigger crowd. Anyway, I enjoy meeting and hearing stories from colorful old timers like him. Thanks for mentioning the interview, I'm looking forward to listening to it.

adamgordonbell2• 5 days ago

Yeah, he has Steve Wozniak energy as well. Just doing things for the joy he gets from it.

Cottage Computer Programming (1984)

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