The Wiert Corner – irregular stream of stuff

Jeroen W. Pluimers on .NET, C#, Delphi, databases, and personal interests

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Archive for the ‘History’ Category

From Turbo Pascal to Delphi to C# to TypeScript, an interview with PL legend Anders Hejlsberg – YouTube

Posted by jpluimers on 2025/04/09

Nice historic perspective: [Wayback/Archive] From Turbo Pascal to Delphi to C# to TypeScript, an interview with PL legend Anders Hejlsberg – YouTube

Via [Wayback/Archive] Zack Urlocker on Twitter: “Great interview with @ahejlsberg on the evolution of programming languages, the rise of TypeScript and more. Anders is one of the best programmers I ever worked with. …”

--jeroen

Posted in .NET, Borland Pascal, C#, Delphi, Development, History, JavaScript/ECMAScript, MS-DOS, Pascal, Scripting, Software Development, Turbo Pascal, TypeScript, Windows Development | Leave a Comment »

Happy 50th birthday Microsoft!

Posted by jpluimers on 2025/04/04

Some beautiful old Microsoft logo material posted on their Twitter profile in 2021 on its 46 birthday and a few of their tweets:

B&W logo

B&W logo

Colour logo

Colour logo

Looking at the Wayback Machine Archivals of the banner logo, I saw two things:

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in History, Power User, Retrocomputing | Tagged: | Leave a Comment »

Welcome to #AprilApples! Apple II Computer event celebrated in the month of April

Posted by jpluimers on 2025/04/01

AprilApples Apple II Computer Event LogoLast year, #Appril][ got rebranded into #AprilApples, so I wish you a happy retro-month filled with April Apples!

[Wayback/Archive] Welcome to #AprilApples! Apple II Computer event celebrated in the month of April

Consider using the [Wayback/Archive] #AprilApples Style Guide with logon on the right, plus Garamond and/or Motter Tektura typeface when possible to really give tribute to the Apple ][ era.


Last year, a big surprise was that Apple Computer put a PDF version of the famous Apple Pascal Poster on the Internet Archive.

So today is a great day to give that more traction and link to it:

A year before, during April][, a remake of that poster got done on AppleFritter: Home[Wayback/Archive] Apple pascal poster, remade | Applefritter

Via [Wayback/Archive] Javmaster@bsky.social: “http://appril2.com/ ” – Mastodon

Fonts:

Images (I used a solid CSS brown background so you can see the difference between the regular logo and the outlined logo):

--jeroen

Posted in //e, 6502, Apple, Apple ///, Apple Lisa, Apple ][, Classic Macintosh, History, Power User | Tagged: , , | Leave a Comment »

ASCII art generator: GitHub – cmatsuoka/figlet: Claudio’s FIGlet tree

Posted by jpluimers on 2025/03/27

Just in case I ever need ASCII art in a document again:

[Wayback/Archive] GitHub – cmatsuoka/figlet: Claudio’s FIGlet tree

Via:

--jeroen

Posted in ASCII, ASCII art / AsciiArt, Development, Encoding, Fun, History, Power User, Retrocomputing, Software Development | Leave a Comment »

Embedding a Floppy Emu in a standard APPLE II Floppy Disk Drive – YouTube

Posted by jpluimers on 2025/03/25

Interesting modification: [Wayback/Archive] Embedding a Floppy Emu in a standard APPLE II Floppy Disk Drive – YouTube

STL: [Wayback/Archive] FermuAssembly.STL – Google Drive [Wayback] FermuAssembly.STL

Buttons: [Wayback/Archive] 3/4/5-Bit Independent Button Module MCU External Button Module Micro Switch Button Board Bluetooth-compatible Power Amplifier – AliExpress 502

--jeroen

Posted in //e, 6502, Apple, Apple ][, Development, Hardware Interfacing, History, Power User, Retrocomputing | Leave a Comment »

Some more links on HEARN/EARN and BITNET relay (which chat and precedes IRC)

Posted by jpluimers on 2025/02/24

Edit 20260218: added archived links to the July 1988 “USERS’ DIRECTORY OF COMPUTER NETWORKS” and the direct link to the Kremvax article from Piet Beertema himself (in addition to the April Fools on the Net posts that were already there) .


Triggered by [Wayback/Archive] Hillel on Twitter: “Gen-Z programmers are always chasing the new shiny thing like Tailwind and Svelte instead of learning CS fundamentals, like React”, below some links on HEARN, EARN and BITNET Relay: conference system before IRC.

I might amend it later with more information, but for now the list is so that I do not have to re-do the search queries.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in About, BITNET Relay, Chat, History, Personal, SocialMedia | Leave a Comment »

Dr. Nadia Drake has discovered both her dads Golden Record pulsar map, and the sketches for the Arecibo message

Posted by jpluimers on 2025/02/07

Ain’t history extra lovely when someone discovers the original drawings of what her dad had sent to space?

Back in the 1970s, Frank Drake did two memorable things: he helped design the Pioneer plaque (sent to space in 1972 on Pioneer 11) containing among other things pulsar map, and later helped design the 1977 Voyager Golden Record (sent to space in 1977 on both Voyager 1 and Voyager 2) again containing the pulsar map. In between, he helped designed Arecibo message broadcasted to space in 1974.

And guess what: today is the 50th anniversary of that message being broadcasted.

Almost 10 years ago, in 2016 his daughter Nadia Drake found back the original drawing of the pulsar map: Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in History, LifeHacker, Power User, science | Leave a Comment »

Computer History Museum interviews with Bill Atkinson on Apple Lisa now on YouTube

Posted by jpluimers on 2025/02/03

Another few great pieces of history got puglished in full on YouTube:

  1. [Wayback/Archive] Bill Atkinson Interview for Lisa’s 40th Anniversary – YouTube
  2. [Wayback/Archive] Bill Atkinson: Polaroids showing the Evolution of the Lisa GUI – YouTube
  3. [Wayback/Archive] Bill Atkinson | Lisa Source Code – YouTube

Via [Wayback/Archive] Memories of Lisa – CHM.

Note that excerpts of the last video were published earlier as:

--jeroen

Posted in 68k, Apple, Apple Lisa, History, Power User | Leave a Comment »

ELIZAGEN – ELIZA Reanimated: The Original 1965 Chatbot Restored On An Emulated IBM 7094 Running MIT’s CTSS

Posted by jpluimers on 2025/01/30

Wow, 60 years after her birth, the original ELIZA Chatbot got resurrected after a re-discovered paper version ¹ of the SLIP and MAD based source code was found in the Joseph Weizenbaum archives: [Wayback/Archive] ELIZAGEN – ELIZA Reanimated

Back in 1965, ELIZA ran on top of CTSS on an IBM 7094. Nowadays, few of that hardware is still running, but luckily there are emulators.

Back in the days, a large percentage people chatting with ELIZA thought she was a real person. With the dwindling language proficiency, the rise in believe in alternative facts, and THE RISE OF USE IN ALL CAPS, likely that percentage has increased.

Steps to get started with ELIZA are at [Wayback/Archive] GitHub – rupertl/eliza-ctss: The original ELIZA on an emulated CTSS environment, which carefully got assembled over the course of the last 2 months.

If you want to know about the process, be sure to read the

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in AI and ML; Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning, Development, History, LISP, Power User, Retrocomputing, Software Development | Leave a Comment »

Applesoft BASIC in JavaScript

Posted by jpluimers on 2025/01/23

Not my first BASIC (which was on calculators: The calculators that got me into programming (via: calculators : Algorithms for the masses – julian m bucknall)), but the first BASIC on a machine with a real keyboard was Applesoft BASIC on an Apple II:

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in //e, 6502, Apple, Apple ][, Applesoft BASIC, BASIC, Development, History, Mastodon, Power User, SocialMedia, Software Development, Twitter | Leave a Comment »