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RE: How Much of the Data in The World Is In XML Format?

• To: "Ken North" <kennorth@s...>,"XML Developers List" <xml-dev@l...>
• Subject: RE: How Much of the Data in The World Is In XML Format?
• From: "Bullard, Claude L \(Len\)" <len.bullard@i...>
• Date: Fri, 9 Jun 2006 07:55:35 -0500
• Thread-index: AcaLVeytN2jdXcS1T6SZ7M8y4wm9UwAbd/ag
• Thread-topic: How Much of the Data in The World Is In XML Format?

When I first arrived at Marshall Space Flight Center to start my career,
the walls were filled with IBM and Sperry manuals.  In my copious spare
time (really, lots between flights), I read them all.  That is how I got
into this racket. ;-)

len 


From: Ken North [mailto:kennorth@s...] 

>> I was throwing away a DEC VAX Fortran manual last week and stopped to

>> think
that once upon a time in my career, almost everything an application
programming engineer had to know to create product was in two 1/2 inch
bound notebooks.

It depended on whose computers you were using, and whether you were a
systems programmer or application programmer.

DEC's documentation was very sparse during the PDP-11 era. By the VAX
era, DEC had more software and more manuals,  but still less than IBM
mainframe documentation. A full set of System 360 manuals would fill a
rack about 4 feet wide. Because they were hard to come by, we'd put our
names on the spine, put them on tethers, or lock them in cabinets.

Years after the Apollo program,  I called a friend's office to see if he
wanted to play tennis during my upcoming trip to Silicon Valley. Someone
else answered the phone and offered to take a message. When she heard my
name, she asked whether I'd ever developed software for Goddard Space
Flight Center. When I said yes, she said "I inherited your set of IBM
manuals after you left."

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