This is "detreville"
It's my name, and the name of my Substack too. That's one less thing for everyone to remember.
I’m John DeTreville, retired Computer Science researcher and practitioner from way back. I started programming in 19661 when everything was fresh and new, and I’ve kept pretty busy since then. Now I’m retired and it’s time for a blog! I’ve done a lot of interesting stuff in my life and I’ve learned a lot of interesting things—really!—so I’m blogging about whatever I want.
(I’ve never had a public blog before, partly because of certain employers’ aversion to employees blogging—or at least to me blogging—plus my own laziness. Now all the NDAs are running out—and the Statute of Limitations too, I hope—so I can probably say anything I want. Let’s see!)
I may tell you about Google’s ad business, or recite opcodes for vintage boxen2 like the IBM 7040 Data Processing System (i.e., “mainframe,” sort of), the M.I.T. Lincoln Labs TX-2 (“Transistorized, Experimental”), or the DEC PDP-8/S minicomputer (the “S” was for “serial,” a.k.a. “slow”). I know the lyrics from all the TV shows from when I was growing up, or from when my own children were growing up. I know lots of other stuff too that I seem never to forget either, so watch out! I can even tell you what I had for breakfast this morning (probably French Toast and a Caffeine-Free Diet Coke®; yum!).
So. I think all the stories here will be interesting (and most probably won’t be about computers, probably). You should subscribe if you think they may be interesting too; just press the Subscribe button, and please let me know what you’d like to see. It’s all free for now, and probably forever; unsubscribing is just as easy, or so one might imagine. You can even make a pledge saying you’d like to subscribe once I turn subscriptions on.
I plan to post about three articles a week, on differing topics and of varying lengths; I’ll figure out just what these topics are as I go along, but expect computer systems, computer programming, and anything else having to do with computers, or even me and other people. I plan to keep old posts around forever but I’ll probably have to Want some alternatives when reading stuff I write? The RSS feed for this Substack is at detreville.substack.com/feed; you can also follow me on Mastodon at @detreville@discuss.systems, or on Twitter (for now) at @detreville.
(Darth Vader and sheep in Toy Story, courtesy of Stable Diffusion. I drew this myself, which is to say no, I didn’t. More on this topic Real Soon Now.)
Really, 1966! Lyndon Johnson was president and Democrats controlled Congress. The Beatles had released Rubber Soul the previous year and were still working on Revolver. Seat belts weren’t standard on new American cars, and there certainly weren’t any laws saying you had to wear them. I had short hair and a briefcase and probably wore a bowtie. It was a magical time.
Calling boxes “boxes” shows I’m kewl.