[COFF] On having a slash

[Mike Markowski]

Showing the usefulness of that, back around 1985 I was in a training 
session at Unisys and the instructor told us about his time as a 
programmer in Vietnam during wartime.  He was part of a group that 
modified software for artillery fire control systems in the field, and 
each time one of the soldier programmers got orders to return home he 
would leave an easter egg in the code.  A few days later a message might 
pop up saying, "Drinking a beer at home watching tv, wish you were 
here??" or little things along those lines.  The instructor said one 
guy, however, went into the code and globally replaced variable names 
with combinations of 1, l, 0, O.  Since the 1/l and 0/O were displayed 
identically, the programmers didn't find the prank funny.  Our 
instructor said as he traveled the US training groups, he hoped he would 
find the guy.  10 or 15 years later he was still more than a tad angry. 
All for lack of slashes and serifs.

Incidentally, living in Austria I was surprised to see ones commonly 
written looking nearly like upside down Vs.

Mike Markowski

On 4/13/20 8:38 AM, Clem Cole wrote:
> FWIW -- I still slash both zeros and sevens.   I was probably 12 when I 
> was taught that trick, plus the print head of an ASR33 slashed zero's 
> and 1, l, 7 were all distinct. So sat the time, it seemed cool and 
> advanced.  Then it just became a habit, and as we know, old habits are 
> difficult to change and frankly, I never saw the reason to stop.  My 
> handwriting is a bit of a mess as it is, so anything I do the make it 
> clear has always been considered a good thing by people around me.🤔
> 
> On Mon, Apr 13, 2020 at 7:31 AM David Barto <david at kdbarto.org 
> <mailto:david at kdbarto.org>> wrote:
> 
>     Yes. When I took my first programming class at UCSD they
>     specifically went through the numbers and alphabet showing the mark
>     up and being very careful to go over 0, 1, 7 and O multiple times.
>     I’ve stopped slashing my 0, and I still slash my 7. IDK why I
>     stopped the one and not the other.
> 
>     A long time ago, in a universe(ity) far far away.
> 
>              David