Data wrangler, software engineer, systems programmer, cyclist. Unix (mostly Solaris) for aeons. I talk C, Python, SQL, Performance, Java, Kafka and Makefiles.
Location
Brisbane, Australia
Education
BA (Mathematics, Modern History), University of Queensland
When I started using Unix (1st year uni), it was SunOS 4. We had VT100-compatible dumb terminals (mix of green/amber on black), whether it was for accessing the CS, Physics, Maths or Stats servers - let alone the university library catalogue (and OMG that was some ghod-awful COBOL-based thing).
In my second year I got access to the Sun 3/ and 4/ workstations that the CS department had upgraded to over the summer, but they were still black and white. Megapixel displays (1152x900), sure, but still monochrome (not like those flyboys in the newly established EE department!).
For me, a colourised terminal was not something I had access to until my final year of uni when I was able to afford to put together a pc to run linux on. By that point my terminal habits were very much set. Sure, I could have a colourised terminal session, but for all the systems I could access at uni I knew that the only emulation setting I could depend upon being there was monochrome vt100/vt102.
Even after I started working (sysadmin at another uni) and we got schmick new Sun Ultra10s with their 2nd level graphics cards, all the systems that we managed were headless and - again - we could depend on monochrome only.
I don't know what the state of screen reading software on linux or Solaris is these days, but all the software engineering experience I've had where we had to go through exhaustive "Accessibility Section 508" checklists has biased me against using colours unless it's in a browser
or an editor.
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When I started using Unix (1st year uni), it was SunOS 4. We had VT100-compatible dumb terminals (mix of green/amber on black), whether it was for accessing the CS, Physics, Maths or Stats servers - let alone the university library catalogue (and OMG that was some ghod-awful COBOL-based thing).
In my second year I got access to the Sun 3/ and 4/ workstations that the CS department had upgraded to over the summer, but they were still black and white. Megapixel displays (1152x900), sure, but still monochrome (not like those flyboys in the newly established EE department!).
For me, a colourised terminal was not something I had access to until my final year of uni when I was able to afford to put together a pc to run linux on. By that point my terminal habits were very much set. Sure, I could have a colourised terminal session, but for all the systems I could access at uni I knew that the only emulation setting I could depend upon being there was monochrome vt100/vt102.
Even after I started working (sysadmin at another uni) and we got schmick new Sun Ultra10s with their 2nd level graphics cards, all the systems that we managed were headless and - again - we could depend on monochrome only.
I don't know what the state of screen reading software on linux or Solaris is these days, but all the software engineering experience I've had where we had to go through exhaustive "Accessibility Section 508" checklists has biased me against using colours unless it's in a browser
or an editor.