That’s a nice bit of history, nice
Reminded of someone recently writing about the original Trusting Trust code, too
From another perspective, ELIZA
ELIZA is a compiler!
(this post was sponsored by the ‘form a certain point of view every program is a compiler’ gang)
from a certain point of view every program is a dependency manager
Tangent to the whole thing: digging through the archives is referred to as “spelunking” in the article. I’ve heard people referring to reading and interpreting legacy code as “archaeology”. What other fun metaphors do we have for looking through old stuff?
I tend to think of looking into the typical awful.systems topic areas as sewer diving
In that sense, as with sewer diving, there’s a sweet spot of anosmia.
I don’t think there’s an elegant Greek-derived word for “hey, look at what I just stepped in”
Perhaps not, but maybe “zemblanity”, a word I found by searching “serendipity but bad”:
Zemblanity is the opposite of serendipity, meaning that it is an unlucky or unwanted, but predictable, event. Although it might be difficult to imagine someone behaving in a manner that could be predicted to cause harm, zemblanity can occur as a result of complex human and organizational factors.
Per ness labs, which the only context I have for it is that it isn’t a dictionary.
excuse me good sir, that’s under the department of societal maintenance
(no I don’t really think that pompously of it but at least the tracking and awareness side of it is not all that far removed either)
Also: I guess this is a spoiler?
spoiler
Upon seeing “Eliza” for the third time, I wondered if it was a reference to “My Fair Lady.” Well, it was, once removed.
