D is for DOS

[@raffriff42]

A DLL video would quickly descend into a mad rant, like when Tom Scott tried to explain time zones.

[@phyphor]

F is for FORTRAN Over half a century old. Still used for financial applications to this day, I was at university studying Actuarial Science and had to learn it. Started out with 80 columns wide for punchcards, and is part of the reason why, to this day, PuTTY has a 80x24 default size. I could go on but it will always be dear to my heart even if you don't pick it for the spotlight.

[@Squossifrage]

You must be thinking of COBOL, as FORTRAN was never widely used for financial applications and certainly isn't today. It's still used a lot for scientific applications though.

[@Swampdragon102]

I'd love a FORTRAN video. Especially since it's still actively used, e.g. for theoretical physics simulations. I have a friend who had to learn the language for his physics doctorate.

[@PauxloE]

But it's not really a 3-letter acronym.

[@ABaumstumpf]

Or for FEM-simulation of gas-diffusion in metal-metal interfaces, or in crumbling-zone simulations. It is still used in so many industries.

[@altosack]

@@PauxloE- Ok, then, if we call it FTN, does it qualify?

[@soapyfrog]

A good TLA for F might be FAT. Something everyone probably has heard of but not how it works, why 8.3 why limits to file count in root directory, why we have FAT12, FAT32, ExFAT etc.

[@chrismarkhill]

With a sidebar on FSCK and other file system checking utilities

[@HiddenAsbestos]

Good one - e.g. why we still can't have ? characters in filenames in 2024

[@user-qf6yt3id3w]

It was also invented by Bill Gates on a flight. He had no laptop but he did have a legal notebook and he worked it out on that.

[@pooyataleb2514]

FTP is the most interesting out of your suggestions but maybe other comments have some good suggestions

[@katanasteel]

The first way mass distribution of demo games

[@globalincident694]

yeah I like FTP, purely because it's something I may actually need to know

[@peterlinddk]

Gary Kildall also co-hosted The Computer Chronicles, an excellent tv-program about the news in the computer-industry. I never knew about it when it ran, but most episodes are available here on KZbin, and they provide an excellent insight into both computer-history and the clothes and hairstyles of the 80s :) Highly recommended!

[@GothAlice]

If you cover DLL (which I’d love if you do!) there should be a mention therein of .O (objects) and .SO (shared objects) from the non-Windows side of things. They all serve similar purposes, just taking slightly different approaches. The non-“shared” ones just being linked and incorporated once, at compile-time, and the “shared” ones being the rough equivalent of DLLs. Loving the series thus far; thanks!

[@timothynewton5231]

I also would love to see Dylan go in depth on DLL.

[@csongorszecska]

I vouch for the fast Fourier transform. Also, I'd love to see a video on dlls. I love your channel. It's everything that I thought Dave's garage would be, but didn't end up becoming. You explain things in a very interesting manner, and do not talk for too long on other unrelated topics, and I love it. Honestly, your channel should grow, not to increase the revenue, just so more people would see your content, that is made purely from your love of the topics.

[@theonlytails]

FFT for the Fast Fourier Transform, the algorithm that literally prevents nuclear war

[@GothAlice]

@@theonlytails And essentially all digital audio compression. Fourier transforms are magic!

[@levonschaftin3676]

how does it prevent nuclear war? genuine question

[@theonlytails]

@@levonschaftin3676 it can detect specific shockwaves in the ground via seismometers, which prevents countries from secretly testing nuclear weapons underground, and opens the door to enforcing nuclear proliferation treaties.

[@JCake]

ssssseY

[@erikgiroday257]

It's also used in the systems that monitors the centrifuges that creates the material for those nukes. Had Iran had a more capable monitoring system for their centrifuges Stuxnet wouldn't have worked (as well at least).

[@mikes333]

I'm fascinated by regular expressions and their somewhat 'complex' set of rules. FSM all the way for me please! ;-)

[@SolarShado]

Speaking as someone who's been "the regex guy" at multiple previous jobs, I'd argue that most of the complexity of regexes comes from their terseness (that is, the very dense syntax, using "metacharacters" rather than more familiar, and approachable, things like keywords and function names) moreso than the rules. As a slight aside, IMO regexes are an excellent example of the power and usefulness of a DSL (not Digital Subscriber Line; Domain Specific Language) can have over a general purpose language.

[@GothAlice]

@@mikes333 Pathological regular expressions are… a thing. Interesting, but you generally want your code to run in finite lengths of time. 😜

[@BobFrTube]

From my personal experience the NDA was indeed Draconian, and we played a similar game with them. I should also say that DOS major advantage over CP/M is that it didn't try to be a full operating system so we had direct access to the underlying hardware.

[@klikkolee]

A note regarding interpreting the libel ruling -- it isn't just about whether the statement is false. It's also about whether the defendant was negligent* (or worse) in making the statement. So the court could have concluded that the defendent had adequate reason to believe the claim to be fact, rather than concluding that it actually *is* fact. Also, standard of evidence is a factor, so you can have two parties make contradictory claims about each other, sue each other for libel, and *both* have their cases dismissed, even if one was truthful and one was lying. It's not that likely un civil court since, for most intents and purposes, the standard of evidence is effectively "there at least a 50% chance the plaintiff is right" The actual court documents probably say which of these possibilities it is, but I'm not digging those up. *If the plaintiff is a "public figure", the standard is stricter -- reckless (or worse)

[@therealjpster]

F is for FAT and FDD, surely. The history of the floppy disk from booting an IBM Mainframe to the last gasp of the LS-240.

[@schworak]

Really enjoying this ABC series! I am an old school geek so a lot of these stories overkap my early computing days.

[@tirsek]

F could be for Files/Floppies/FAT, FPU and FLOPS and talk about performance, Forward Error Correction, or a FAQ and cover questions received in the comments so far ... or Freedom and FOSS.

[@tolstukha]

F for FLV maybe? The first widespread video format on the internet

[@rhrabar0004]

You are a great teacher and speaker. Thank you for making these videos

[@LuminousWatcher]

I remember getting a set of disks with the newest DOS (6.22) in a middle eastern country where copyright was not something anyone gave any attention, only to realize that it was infected with a virus. When I told that to the person i got it to he was not happy. He ended up spending a lot of time reinstalling DOS on many computers

[@Viremind]

Definitely voting for FSM. I can't pass up the chance to hear about RegEx!

[@PhillipEaton]

F is for FORTH, which isn't an acronym, but a contraction (i.e. the U was removed). It's use was widespread back in the 8-bit days, as it was an operating system, programming environment and philosophy all-in-one. Forth is a different paradigm to all other Algol-derived languages and is what might have happened if Microsoft hadn't been so successful with BASIC. And it's still being used today by many enthusiasts, especially in the embedded space.

[@benjamintayler-barrett4480]

Whether as a part of this series or otherwise...I'd like to hear about FSMs. Your geeking out about text encoding taught me almost as much as Dave Farley's book on modern software engineering!

[@birkett83]

The most significant F for me has to be FFT, the fast fourier transform. Opens up the world of digital audio, images and video.

[@Kobold666]

FTP was quite important, we also used the server-to-server FXP transfer to mirror files from other dumps. That was file sharing deluxe.

[@Squossifrage]

FXP was not a protocol, just the name of a client that opened control connections to two separate FTP servers and then got them to transfer data directly to each other instead of the client.

[@vmisev]

Thanks for the video! Great story about upgrading dad’s PC 😊. Talking about DOS, it's worth mentioning first one - IBM DOS/360 (’66) and later ones in the ‘70s - CBM DOS, Atari DOS, Apple DOS etc. BTW, Garry was flying that day, that’s true, but he was flaying with associate to attend another meeting w IBM in their building, after which he returned to the meeting in DRI office.

[@RogerLipscombe]

Since we're doing history: FLV (Flash Video). You could segue from there to video compression/streaming or -- instead -- Flash/ActiveX/JavaScript, etc.

[@dj196301]

The history of DOS... based on a Greek tragedy. The first machine I actually owned was a Unisys 286 with 1M memory and a ridiculously massive 20M disk.

[@petewarner1077]

"Hello Mr Beattie, this is Officer Warner from the O/S Police. We've been re-examining some cold-cases and with new information coming to light about an incident at John Lewis in August 1991, we'd like you to come down to the station to help us with our investigation."

[@jozef-javorsky-dodo]

THX for this great series it is cool

[@JanWalzer]

A nice DOS "Clone" was the late PTS-DOS (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PTS-DOS) which was blazingly fast and had some nice additional features built in, for what you normally needed dedicated drivers. BTW: F should be "f000:fff0"

[@reidatherton7743]

That's like when I was around that age and my family bought a computer sold by a local university. One day I noticed there was another hard disk partition taking up room and I tried switching that one to boot. It wasn't DOS and I was obligated to boot from floppy to switch the active boot partition back again. But we didn't have a boot disk floppy lying around so I had to make one from the computer at my dad's nearby office. Parents weren't pleased at the time...but I certainly tried to reassure them that it'd all be fine in a few minutes.

[@gwaptiva]

Yep, deleting those two poxy .sys files would brick it good. Still happened in the mid-/late 90s when I did tech support for the evil empire. For some models, though, they had an easy solution, known internally as the 2mbr: The two-mouse-button reboot. This worked for all the systems (not that many to be fair) which had PCDOS4 on a ROM chip. You could update your own DOS, and then it'd use that, but if you needed to reset, hold both mouse buttons down and switch on the machine.

[@AJMansfield1]

F is for FIR, the Finite Impulse Response DSP filter architecture. Even more than the FFT, it's the FIR filter and the Z-Transform underpinning it that enables modern fast digital audio EQ, at a performance cost hardly even greater than the cost of just shuttling audio sample data around in the first place.

[@jeffdavis9962]

Honorable mention for F on the hardware side - FPCs, Flexible Printed Circuits, are probably the second largest contributor to electronics miniaturization, after Moore's Law and ever-increasing silicon density.

[@wayne_taylor]

I would like to see the DLL video

[@kaibaesler]

Don't care what TLA you choose for F, but please, give an honorable mention to FOO (and BAR, and thus FUBAR ;-) )

[@maxmuster7003]

D is the first letter of the magic DEBUG crafting table to build powerfull spells for DOS to level up as a Wizzard of DOS. I put all basic ingredients to craft a new spell into a batch file and the batch file have to start with some more special ingredients attached to control the crafting to make a specific spell.

[@DragoniteSpam]

someone i knew a while ago had a shirt that said "bad decisions make good stories" and i have a funny feeling 12-year-old dylan would be in agreement

[@marloelefant7500]

Looking forward to the episode on FOSS - Free and Open Source Software. Would be fitting given the context, doesn't it?

[@thezipcreator]

probably will be talked about in the EFF video

[@dantenotavailable]

@@thezipcreator or the GNU video

[@ka9dgx]

F is for FORTH, the best small computer language

[@kaibaesler]

agree, but it isn't a TLA, unless you go for "4TH"

[@PhillipEaton]

@@kaibaesler whilst not an acronym, it is a contraction of "FOURTH"

[@lesfreresdelaquote1176]

In 1984, I was doing an internship at the IBM factory in Montpellier (France) and I had the privilege to work on one of the first IBM PC available in France. A guy who doing an internship with me used the famous "debug.exe" program to modify the "command" executable. He replaced "dir" with "fer" because "dire c'est bien mais faire c'est mieux" which can be translated into "to say is good but to do is better". A very very bad pun indeed. The next day we met with our supervisor who was close to a nervous breakdown asking us what we had do to the computer since it wouldn't work anymore. The poor guy who was in charge of a rare PC with a very expensive hard-drive had stayed up to 10pm the previous night trying to make the machine work.

[@lareolanKFP]

Cool series. A very interesting concept, and F should definitely stand for FAT as that's a pretty interesting and broad topic.

[@HattmannenNilsson]

I saw that someone else mentioned FAT as an option for the letter F. I think it's certainly deserves a mention as it's so ubiquitous. Every device under the sun will happily read your FAT formatted SD card as long as you can find a way to plug it in.

[@GodmanchesterGoblin]

E is also for Econet, enabling the BBC Micro to be networked in the educational environment.

[@zxuiji]

I could use that video on DLLs... then again I could just check the docs. I'm developing a crossplatform ABI (slower than a turtle due to lazyiness but you get the picture) and one thing that I need to overcome is "dllimport" vs "extern" and "dllexport" vs "" that normally needs to be applied in the API just to build on the native system. And since the GetProcAddress function apparently ignores anything not marked dllexport while dlsym just treats everything not explicitly marked hidden as public by default I need to write a custom handler for the win32 case so a vid would be very much appreciated

[@judewestburner]

I just love this time in history - and how right now we are descendants and beneficiaries.

[@AndreasScherer-k3f]

I vote for FSM, having just read an upcoming TUGboat article about their application to optimize the performance of the CWEB macros that I maintain.

[@dantenotavailable]

Some honourable mentions for F:- FDDI FPGA (Hindsight suggests it was less valuable than expected but it's different) FFT (Would be a surprisingly solid entry since it's used in modern comms systems) FILO (Data Types! Put it on the stack) FLAC FPS (Because Id has to surface again... ok maybe not) FQDN (Get started on DNS even before TCP) FSF (Probably better off with GNU but it is an option)

[@chrismarkhill]

FAQ including its NASA origins. Talk about mailing lists, Usenet and general netiquette. Go into the history of modern incarnations like Experts Exchange and Stack Overflow.

[@blenderpanzi]

FMV: Full motion video. In point and click adventures like Phantasmagoria.

[@billpg]

10:47 Amstrad PC 2286? I had that exact model!

[@bripbrap]

Has to be FTP! It was such a huge deal for some many areas, and still widely used today.

[@vmisev]

hear, hear!

[@DrCoomerHvH]

And even Taylor Swift MP3's!

[@AubreyBarnard]

F is for Fortran, of course! And the associated histories of numerical and scientific computing. One could also cover it as one of the original imperative languages, and, perhaps, its relation to punch cards.

[@ebenolivier2762]

How about a history of FMV (Full Motion Video)?

[@smartyhall]

Fidonet would be a really interesting subject. It managed to span the globe with a surprising amount of reliability, despite being built on top of technologies never meant to support anything like it.

[@Semaley]

F for Foxpro, where major corporations went beyond 123 and Excel to automate their businesses. The DOS version had to use Expanded memory, and Windows used Extended, leading to physical altercations with PC Support wanting the same configuration throughout a firm, which favored Windows, but not the business critical applications developed in the years leading up to the emergence of the Windows stack with a web browser and email program (initially Netscape and Lotus on a Novell network, and Foxpro became Powerbuilder in Windows custom applications).

[@max_208]

F for Formats, you could mention the different kinds of format and competing standards (disk formats, file formats, date/time formats, number formats, compression formats...)

[@justafriend5361]

"E stands for EOL and the ongoing IT/OT-battles about the right time to replace the XP-PC that are still running as part of a bigger system." Maybe in round 2?

[@capability-snob]

D is for Delegation! The ability to delegate some of your authority to someone you trust to fulfil it is a keystone of civilisation. Some security models try to prevent you from sharing your authority, however, if the choice is between getting your work done and obeying arbitrary restrictions from some distant, faceless IT admin team, you know exactly what wins. Your boss is going to write down their password on a piece of paper, and by the 3-5 business days it takes to have your access added to that important company drive, you've already completed the task at hand. The lesson is clear: don't try to prevent delegation, it's not possible. Make it easy to do, and easy to audit. Honourable mention for DCCS, the Distributed Capability Computing System, an early network protocol that directly supported capability security, by Jed Donnelley in 1976.

[@Elesario]

I'd say there's some perfectly good Computerphile videos on Finite State Machines, but not sure I've seen anything on FTP. Fortran also sounds interesting, as someone suggested. FAT and related are interesting, but not sure there's a great deal to learn about it.

[@user-qf6yt3id3w]

Tim Patterson reimplemented the CP/M API so that an 8080 program translated to 8086 code would work. However DOS was is quite different from CP/M. It's 8086 code rather than 8080. It uses FAT which originated with Microsoft Standalone Disk Basic rather than the CP/M file system. Patterson optimised the DOS/IO.SYS interface compared to CP/M. CP/M needs SETTRK, SETSEC, SETDMA before a READ or WRITE but Patterson's interface just had READ or WRITE calls. In the original version of FAT the whole FAT was stored in memory which made it all rather fast. MSDOS also allowed programs to use more than 64K, in fact up to 1MB. Unfortunately the IBM PC allocated a generous 384K for IO which produced the infamous 640K limit. Still if you compared it to CP/M which had a 64K address space it was a pretty roomy system. Though one thing PC compatible machines did gain was a de facto standard for all the hardware. So your word processor bypassed the BIOS and wrote directly to the screen. And your terminal emulator bypassed the BIOS and accessed the serial port directly. This was a bit crufty and it meant DOS machines needed a clean room BIOS from Phoenix or AMI and register compatible peripherals. However it meant DOS machines were a lot more capable than CP/M ones where programs had to use escape sequences to do screen IO and those weren't even part of the CP/M standard. I think both Kildall and Patterson were excellent engineers. And actually Kildall's wife was right to hold off on that draconian IBM NDA until Kildall got back. Actually the real reason the PC didn't run CP/M was because CPM-86 was delayed.too long while MS-DOS was ready. Also Patterson apparently sold the rights cheap and took a consultancy job at Microsoft. He probably did OK from stock options in the long run though, like everyone who joined Microsoft early did.

[@GodmanchesterGoblin]

I first ran Povray on a 10MHz 286 with a 287 FPU. My first render took around 48 hours. A year or so later my 486DX/33 was quite a bit faster!

[@nocakewalk]

My vote goes to FAT32 for the history and/or FSM for the geek.

[@geoffrichards9621]

I'm torn between FSMs & floating point. Will look forward to seeing what you go with.

[@mtarek2005]

yeah

[@lucidmoses]

Kind of expected a passing nod to the original DOS from 1966.

[@menachemsalomon]

As long as I've been reading about the origin of the IBM PC, I've always read 8086 as "eighty eighty-six", not as "eight oh eight six". I noticed that you consistently use the latter reading, and now I'm wondering where I got my reading from and if it's wrong. FWIW, I had access to Peter Norton's books about assembly language, and I may have gotten my way of reading it from there.

[@DylanBeattie]

I've always called it the eight-oh-eight-six because eighty-eighty-six, to me, could mean "80 86" or "80 80 6". Might also be a US/UK thing? Here in the UK, the subsequent Intel chips were always referred to as the two-eight-six, three-eight-six, four-eight-six; the only folks I ever heard call it a three-eighty-six were from North America.

[@Rx7man]

F for" FML, I deleted the operating system"

[@notCalle]

Would the FSF use an FFI to FTP files from a FAT? We might never know.

[@rdstevens1]

FFmpeg? It's a rich seam, touching on free software, EFF/GPL/LGPL. Piracy - ripping DVDs without transcoding them was a challenge. Open source - and forks/schisms. It's been around a long time, written in C, is very performant, and has yet to be supplanted...

[@rdstevens1]

Of course I’ve just realised it’s neither a TLA nor an initialism!

[@CottonInDerTube]

I dont get it - why do we skip "E" ?

[@capability-snob]

E will be about the Electronic Frontier Foundation. The reason we are discussing F now is so the script can be written comfortably before being produced.

[@harrkev]

I vote for FSM. Or, why choose? Touch on all of them. But your target audience certainly knows about FPUs and FTP, but I am sure that there is some interesting history there.

[@polares8187]

F is for flash and the flash animation and gaming culture

[@ZacJW]

F is for File Allocation Table (FAT)

[@LeifAlmberg-q2p]

Dear Dylan, for F I suggest FAT (FAT32), Fubar, FTP (and the quite obscure FTPS) and maybe F can stand for 4DOS?

[@falsemcnuggethope]

Since you've talked about operating systems, why not filesystems? I'm sure you can find some stories behind FAT.

[@gustavokupcevich7895]

Hmmm, maybe FAT and file systems?

[@marcobrod796]

Yey, honorable mentions! FFT, FTP or FSM's? Choose whatever you can tell the best story about, i don't want a technical lecture.

[@JW-uC]

F is for FORTRAN. Ok, its not a TLA but boy is it still important for some very important, but niche, use cases.

[@knkootbaoat6759]

doing good wbu how are you doing dylan?

[@m4rt_]

No mention of the other DOS? Denial Of Service.

[@StevePoston-em6vh]

I can't wait when we get to the letters 'O' and 'R' ... Think

[@skyrimax]

F is for the Free Software Foundation (unless you planned on addressing the FSF in G for GPL)

[@kmac499]

And then I was told about ETLA's.... WTF are they said I....? Extended Three Letter Acronyms... 🤣🤣🤣

[@Felinaro]

Since you made B about BBC not BBS, than F for... FidoNet (FTN to be 3-letter)?

[@ligius3]

F = file. It touches on FS as well, pipes, floppy. We take files for granted today while FTP and Fortran (not to mention Foxpro) are all but dead.

[@AubreyBarnard]

Fortran is not dead! You just don't see it because it's behind the scenes. It's still very much present in most numerical / scientific computing, such as AI and machine learning. For example, most matrix and linear algebra operations are implemented in Fortran (and the host language just calls down to it).

[@katanasteel]

You did buy the floppies. What's on them when you left was just a slightly more ordered magnetic mess

[@redoktopus3047]

FAT would be something i'd love to learn about from you but FORTRAN is something i love and want you to talk about haha FTP might get clicks from its use outside of computers lol

[@oysteinsoreide4323]

I actually make a DOS computer become a brick. I just moved a file from one place to another, and after that nobody could start the computer any more. It wasn't a critical computer though.

[@polares8187]

F is for firewall

[@cybersholt]

F could be for Fortran but FSM sounds better.

[@ryaneakins7269]

All these different DOSes, and no mention of GLaDOS?

[@HeilTec]

F is for FTP - Though except for the hardy its sftp.

[@AlwaysHCYT2]

fast Fourier transform (FFT)

[@Skyb0rg]

F for (Adobe) Flash, the now-discontinued and disabled animation and game software that was ubiquitous across the web and represented a different model of what web apps would be (Java Applets)

[@Toradoshi12]

Finite-state machines would be awesome.

[@m4rt_]

FTP is probably a good choice for the F video.

[@gpietsch]

I didn't know DR-DOS 8.0 swiped GPL code from FreeDOS before. I just wish you'd used FreeDOS's version of Edlin instead of 86-DOS's because that is GPL as well. (It's also written by a bizarre, craven programmer who wants to take over the world, but I digress.)

[@timseguine2]

F is for FPGA?

[@jonduke4472]

Digital Typographer sounds better than XSL wrangler. I need to update my email signature

[@gbrusella]

F for Fortan and he history of Programing (ASM, Basic, COBOL / C, DARSIMCO / DOPE, Fortan) F for Files / FAT / Fat32?

[@petewindsor4096]

F is for FORTRAN but that's not a TLA