computers

I first learned computer programming about 1974, using FORTRAN running on an IBM 360 system that, yes, filled a whole room. And yes, my source code existed in the form of a stack of cards with holes punched in them, which got run through a physical card reader. FORTRAN and similar old-school languages were efficient (b/c computer resources were so constrained) and syntactically simple for solving well-specified problems.

C++ started to become popular in the 1980s, and Java in the 1990s. A big part of their appeal was that they were “object-oriented programming” (OOP) languages. I repeatedly asked my computer-programming professional friends back then to help me understand the difference between OOP and conventional Fortran type programs. They would get misty-eyed and rhapsodize about how their program components were modularized. I guess I just failed to ask the right questions, because I never could understand why what they were talking about was so very much better or different than a good clean FORTRAN program, where most of the work was compartmentalized into well-defined functions and sub routines.

So I had a good talk with Claude about all this, and achieved enlightenment.. The differences seem to come down to a couple of key concepts:

(1) Data Compartmentalization

In FORTRAN, you can modularize the data manipulation steps into subroutines, but the data tends to be more in common. Thus, for a very large programs, it is hard to keep some far-distant subroutine from accidentally altering your data. But with OOP, the data and the manipulation methods are “encapsulated” into one airtight thing, so no outside routine can mess with that data.

(2) More Robust Relations Among Chunks of Code

With OOP, there is also a feature called “inheritance”, where some new method can take advantage of an existing method, in a cleaner way than (in the FORTAN world) having a new subroutine call an existing subroutine, which would involve explicitly passing a bunch of parameters back-and-forth (which is very easy to mess up).

For doing fairly straightforward scientific calculations, even big ones, I think FORTRAN is still easier and more efficient. But for modern financial programs, involving millions of lines, written by huge teams of people that cannot all talk to one another, the win goes to OOP. Besides C++ and Java (still popular), in OOP we now have C# (standard for many Windows and gaming applications), and the crowd favorite, Python.

(That’s about it simply as I could put it, without getting long-winded and technical… If you want more details, you can always ask my buddy Claude)

Your Function Keys Are Cooler Than You Think
by someone who used to press F1 by mistake

Ever notice the F keys on your keyboard? F1 through F12. Sitting at the top like unused shelf space. If you’re at a computer now, take a glance. I used to think they did nothing, or at least nothing for me. Maybe experts used them. Experts who know what BIOS and DOS are. But for me, just little space fillers with no purpose. I frequently pressed F1 by accident rather than escape. A help window would pop up, wasting half a second of my life until I closed it.

But the Fn keys (function keys) are sneaky useful. They can save you serious time. No clicking. No dragging. No fumbling with touchpad mis-clicks.

When using a web browser, F5 refreshes the web page. Windows has added the same functionality for folders too, updating recently edited files. Fast and easy. F11 changes your web browser view to full screen. Great for long reads or historical documents. F12 shows the guts of a webpage. That’s perfect if you web scrape or need to know what things are called behind the scenes. Ctrl + F4 closes a tab. Alt + F4 shuts the whole application instance down. That last one works for almost all applications.

Excel? F4 saves so much of your life. It toggles absolute cell, row, and column references. Have you ever watched someone try to click on the right spot with their touchpad and manually press the ‘$’ sign… twice? I can feel myself slowly creeping toward death as my life wastes away. Whereas pressing F4 lets you get on with your life. F12 in most Microsoft applications is ‘Save As’. No need to find the floppy disk image on that small laptop screen. PowerPoint has its own tricks—F5 begins the presentation. Shift + F5 starts it from the current slide. Not bad. And don’t forget F7! That’s the spellcheck hotkey. But now it’s been expanded to include grammar, clarity, concision, and inclusivity.

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