From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: tfb@tfeb.org (Tim Bradshaw) Date: Thu, 23 Mar 2017 14:00:10 +0000 Subject: [TUHS] Were all of you.. Hippies? In-Reply-To: References: <20170322174921.4DC6518C08B@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> Message-ID: On 22 Mar 2017, at 22:35, Nick Downing wrote: > > It was not just the convenience and productivity improvements but that the 'hit' was coming harder and faster. I think this is completely right, and is the reason that really interactive / resident environments can be so catastrophically addictive. Even on a fairly slow machine it doesn't take more than a second or so to compile a single function, and the whole edit/save/compile/link/debug cycle becomes compressed to edit/compile-one-function/debug, with cycle times of a few seconds. I have quite seriously lost a year of my life this way, although I am reasonably sure that part of the problem is that the Xerox d-machines were actually made by the Fair Folk and using them for any length of time results in the standard issues associated with dealing with artifacts of the Fay.