How security holes happen

[Mark H. Harris]

On Wednesday, March 5, 2014 2:26:12 AM UTC-6, Steven D'Aprano wrote:
> On Wed, 05 Mar 2014 08:37:42 +0200, Marko Rauhamaa wrote:
> 
> > If you had tried Python 30 years ago, you'd give it up for any serious
> > work because it would be so slow and consume so much memory.
> 
> /facepalm
>
> Python is only 23 years old, so it would have been a good trick to have 
> tried it 30 years ago. 

hi Steven,  QOTD,  I go back to the day of the MITS Altair 8800.  My 
high school had one. I was writing machine code for the Wang 700 series
programmable desk calculator, and punching in code on the Altair 8800,
with toggle switches. I'm one of the guys Bill Gates wrote his famous 
open letter to in 1976. I was there.  In 1984 the only language being used
to write *anything* in the general sphere of personal computing was either
MS DEBUG.COM (one of my favorites) or BASIC---which was ubiquitous, 
where like almost *every* computer booted directly into a BASIC interpreter,
the noted exception being the first IBM PC.

The pre-cursor to python was ABC created at CWI in about 1991. One of 
its purposes (according to Guido) was to, and I quote, "Stamp out BASIC".

My first IBM machine was the famous PCjr... booted directly into cartridge 
BASIC, or would optionally boot DOS 2.1 from 5" floppy, where I could 
run, you guessed it BASICA, using the cartridge rom,  or I could optionally
run DEBUG.COM and code up 8086 machine code (not assembler, mind you).

Well, I used my PCjr until 1992 (python was one year old, and ABC would
not run on a PC); when I purchased my 486 SX. Guess what?  ---still 
coding BASIC, DEBUG.COM... and whoohoo, Turbo Pascal........  

At IBM we were coding Rexx on the VM370 systems, and then Rexx on the
OS/2 systems; no python, and nothing much else either , oh yes, Turbo BASIC,
Visual BASIC, and of course BASICA although you could then get it as GWBASIC,
... still no python. 

Did anyone mention that PCs back in that day were toys. And I do mean toys. 
They were slow, they crashed, their graphics sucked, and your storage medium 
was a floppy disk.  Linus was working in Finland on basic... Richard Stallman was
working on GNU, Guido was working at CWI on python. The PC really didn't come
into its own (and they were still slow) until the Pentium4. Personal computers
really did not begin to really shine until about 1998 (a mere 16 years ago) when
IBM and other began to take a serious look into gnu/linux research. 

PCs were fast enough, had enough memory, and even had python. Of course
most of us were not using it... mostly C of various brands (notably MIX) and
Visual BASIC.  Quick BASIC was ubiquitous by that time, and MASM had taken
over for DEBUG.com.   Those were the days.  

There has been a resurgence of interest in BASIC today; notably Mintoris, and 
Chipmunk. But now everyone usually has some flavor of python installed on
their computer (and most don't know it) because python is being used under
the covers as a scripting language of choice. Wide adoption is still coming, 
in the future, but the future looks good for python; competing of course with
(notably) Java or Dalvik (Android Java). 

In my day computers were slide-rules. Businesses were still using Comptometers
(still being taught on my high school) and the modern age of computing 
would not occur for forty years. Trust me, thirty years ago was like the dark
ages of personal computing and python wasn't even a gleam in her daddy's eye.....

If fact, now that I think of it, Monte Python and the Holy Grail came out in 1975,
one year before the MITS Altair 8800 Bill Gates open letter, and one year after I
graduated from high school. 

{world according to me}
marcus