{"id":16561,"date":"2020-12-28T11:29:27","date_gmt":"2020-12-28T16:29:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/?p=16561"},"modified":"2020-12-28T11:29:30","modified_gmt":"2020-12-28T16:29:30","slug":"timtowtdi-70","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/2020\/12\/28\/timtowtdi-70\/","title":{"rendered":"TIMTOWTDI &#8217;70"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>One of the earlier acknowledgements of the inevitability of <a href=\"http:\/\/wall.org\/~larry\/pm.html\">TIMTOWTDI<\/a> in programming:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"888\" height=\"200\" src=\"https:\/\/scruss.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/timtowtdi70.jpg\" alt=\"In computing there is always more than one correct way of approaching a given problem. Generally a standard mathematical method for solution can be found, or a method developed. Programs using the same method can still be written in more than one correct way.\" class=\"wp-image-16562\" srcset=\"https:\/\/scruss.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/timtowtdi70.jpg 888w, https:\/\/scruss.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/timtowtdi70-320x72.jpg 320w, https:\/\/scruss.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/timtowtdi70-160x36.jpg 160w, https:\/\/scruss.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/timtowtdi70-768x173.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 888px) 100vw, 888px\" \/><figcaption>from Digital Equipment Corporation, PDP-8 Handbook Series: <em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.bitsavers.org\/pdf\/dec\/pdp8\/handbooks\/programmingLanguages_May70.pdf\">Programming Languages<\/a><\/em> (May 1970), p.12-6<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Admittedly, it&#8217;s talking about BASIC \u00e2\u20ac\u201d and by BASIC, PDP-8 BASIC was <em>very<\/em> basic<a href=\"#one\">\u00c2\u00b9<\/a> indeed \u00e2\u20ac\u201d but there&#8217;s always more than one correct way to implement a solution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator\"\/>\n\n\n\n<p><a name=\"one\">\u00c2\u00b9<\/a>: no text string handling, variable names limited to two characters in [A-Z][0-9] format, IF\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6THEN can only take a line number as argument (as with Dartmouth BASIC), one statement per line, max 350 lines or so. I&#8217;d heard that DEC thought that BASIC was going to be a passing fad and that their own <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/FOCAL_(programming_language)\">FOCAL<\/a> language was going to &#8220;win&#8221;, so their BASIC offerings were deliberately given less attention than FOCAL. Hmm \u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One of the earlier acknowledgements of the inevitability of TIMTOWTDI in programming: Admittedly, it&#8217;s talking about BASIC \u00e2\u20ac\u201d and by BASIC, PDP-8 BASIC was very basic\u00c2\u00b9 indeed \u00e2\u20ac\u201d but there&#8217;s always more than one correct way to implement a solution. \u00c2\u00b9: no text string handling, variable names limited to two characters in [A-Z][0-9] format, IF\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6THEN [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"TIMTOWTDI '70, because there's always more than one correct way of approaching a problem","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16561","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-computers-suck"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pQNZZ-4j7","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16561","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16561"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16561\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16564,"href":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16561\/revisions\/16564"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16561"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16561"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16561"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}