Collins: Bootstrap
My first job at Rockwell Collins was they needed to write something to load the computer from nothing; the bootstrap.
~ Aristotle Sabouni
Created: 2022-03-06 |
Since, the machine can't do anything until you've loaded it with some program, and you can't load it with something until it can do something. You have to write a bootstrap, which is the minimum code required to load/run the next thing. But you don't even have the code to use a keyboard: you put it into the system by using something called a switch panel: an archaic software engineer torture device, that has a bunch of switches. You flip each switch (but) into either the on or off position (0 or 1), and say "load" and then go to the next address and do the same. When you get many hundreds of instructions loaded, you hit the execute button, and watch the lights flash for a while; and hopefully load enough other code, so you can stop using the switch panel.
This was ancient stuff, even when I was doing it, I started a slogan that went around the office; "U.S. Air Force: work on yesterday's technology tomorrow". Because there was little documentation, I just mapped out the entire instruction set in binary on a one-sheet piece of paper (that others used).
It, like all projects that have consultants on them, was behind schedule and under the gun, and had been screwed up by others before me, which was why I was thrown at it. Shit rolls down hill, and "the new guy" is the valley, and consultants are often the hole at the bottom of that valley. Because I didn't know what I couldn't do, how long it should take (and didn't care) I just went and started over and wrote it from scratch, and got it back on-schedule; actually ahead of schedule. So this meant that now I deserved to be given a tougher challenge. The old, "increase load until failure" technique of motivation, or the reward of hard work is more work.
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