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dcminteryesterday at 2:31 PM1 replyview on HN

It doesn't seem to have been mentioned in the comments so far, but as a floppy-disk era developer I remember my mind was blown by the discovery that DEL was all-bits-set because this allowed a character on paper tape and punched card to be deleted by punching any un-punched holes!


Replies

axblountyesterday at 4:49 PM

Bit-level skeuomorphism! And since NUL is zero, does that mean the program ends wherever you stop punching? I've never used punch cards so I don't know how things were organized.