At Least We Got Rid of Line Numbers
Modern programming is stressful.
We’ve got frameworks that change every five minutes, dependencies that break themselves for sport, and build systems that require more configuration than a NBN router in 2011.
Some days it feels like software development is just trying to keep a wobbly house of cards standing in a cyclone.
But at least we got rid of line numbers.
A Stress New Programmers Never Knew
There’s an anxiety older coders remember that modern developers will never experience.
Being asked to write real software in a language that required human-generated line numbers.
Actual:
10 PRINT "HELLO"
20 GOTO 10
style line numbers.
If you never had to live like that, congratulations! You skipped a very specific form of programmer misery.
Coding With Extra Headaches
Programming was already hard enough.
You had to think about logic, bugs, memory limits, and whether the computer was going to throw a tantrum.
And on top of that, you also had to manage imaginary addresses in your head.
“Right… I’ll start this routine at 3000. That should be plenty of space.”
It was never plenty of space.
Add too much code and suddenly you were out of numbers, half your GOTOs were broken, and your “quick change” had just turned into an all-night renumbering party.
Good times.
Refactoring Was Basically a Weekend Plan
Today, refactoring is normal. Back then it was an event!
Because moving code around wasn’t just tidying things up, it'ss like trying to renovate a house while it was still on fire.
You didn’t casually improve programs.
You stared at them and thought:
“Is this feature really worth ruining my Saturday?”
Progress… Sort Of
Of course, modern development replaced those problems with new ones.
Now we fight with containers, build pipelines, dependency hell, and error messages that look like they were generated by an angry robot having a bad day.
In many ways we swapped small simple problems for giant complicated ones.
But still…
Small Victories Matter
Whenever I’m knee-deep in some ridiculous modern tech disaster, I try to remember:
But thank whatever digital gods look after developers…
At least we got rid of line numbers.
