Timeline for Why were early electronic computers mutually incompatible?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
15 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Feb 20, 2021 at 15:15 | history | edited | Danu♦ | edited tags | |
| Jun 17, 2020 at 1:14 | comment | added | user466 | This would be better for retrocomputing.SE. | |
| Jun 15, 2020 at 10:59 | comment | added | Thorbjørn Ravn Andersen | Why does car manufactorers not use interchangeable parts? | |
| Jun 15, 2020 at 3:49 | history | edited | Big Brother | CC BY-SA 4.0 | added 23 characters in body; edited tags; edited title |
| Jun 15, 2020 at 2:07 | answer | added | user12665 | timeline score: 3 | |
| Apr 19, 2020 at 18:13 | vote | accept | CommunityBot | ||
| Apr 19, 2020 at 2:56 | answer | added | mikb | timeline score: 5 | |
| Apr 18, 2020 at 13:16 | history | edited | user12316 | CC BY-SA 4.0 | Corrected some inaccuracies concerning incompatibility of programming languages |
| Apr 18, 2020 at 13:13 | comment | added | user12316 | @JohnForkosh: Thanks for sharing your personal experience. Just found out that first versison of Fortran was introduced to public in 1957. I a little bit corrected my question. | |
| Apr 18, 2020 at 12:48 | comment | added | John Forkosh | You're being a little too harsh. Fortran was pretty widely available by the early 1960's, as were 026 keypunches using standardized bcd coding. No problem running the same 026-punched Fortran program on pretty much any machine with a Fortran II compiler. My personal experience in 1967, with a part-time programming job at NYU: Tuck Howe brought his Music4BF program, running on a 7094 at Princeton, to NYU, where I got it running on our 360/30. And then we brought it down the street to the Courant Institute, where we got it running on their CDC-6600. No more porting problem than I'd expect today. | |
| Apr 18, 2020 at 1:33 | answer | added | vonbrand | timeline score: 4 | |
| Apr 18, 2020 at 1:29 | comment | added | Conifold | Why is from 1950 to 1964 "so long"? It was an age of generating ideas and trial and error for a new type of technology, when people did not really know what they were doing, and even less so what would work best. It made little sense to lock in early, and then drag it along like an albatross. It took from 1868 to 1888 to start standardizing typewriters, far simpler devices, so the real question is why did it not take longer (my guess is that cold war and Moon race sped up the process). | |
| Apr 17, 2020 at 21:56 | comment | added | user12316 | @JonCuster: I worked with all Windows systems you mentioned and you are right that it is difficult to run some old programs on new versions, however, there are compatibility regimes, emulators etc. Moreover, when I write a code on one computer I can run it on another one, I can use same printer on computers produced by different manufacturers etc. And this was not case in 1950's. | |
| Apr 17, 2020 at 17:44 | comment | added | Jon Custer | I guess you don't have long experience in upgrading your operating system and having to replace software (Win 3.1 - Win NT - Win 10 arc for example). Or the whole transitioning of the Mac platform from 68000 to Intel. Backwards compatibility is not always a good thing. | |
| Apr 17, 2020 at 14:22 | history | asked | user12316 | CC BY-SA 4.0 |