The SAIL source to Les Earnest's finger program is here[0].
“Thank you for applying for a job here. We took a look at your code examples and don’t think you have enough experience with algorithms to meet the high bar here at $BIGCO.”
On one hand, some things feel a high-level as C - such as many of the procs starting with "proc oops". On the other hand, things like "proc netloc" seem to have a chunk of assembly embedded in the middle of it. The use of symbols in the code (e.g., "←", which seems to be the assignment operator) is also interesting.
Even though I don't fully understand it, I find old code like this absolutely fascinating. I also feel the same way about old electronics/electrical manuals.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAIL_(programming_language)
Thanks!
Looks like they had their own character set
Fun story, VLSI Technologies (chip maker, later eaten by Phillips in 1999) wrote a bunch of its internal CAD systems in SAIL. It was stuff like routing and layout and simulation. They had a group maintaining SAIL tools as well.
Oh they were also big into ClearCase, and had a whole team administering a policy layer for that. Not optimal.
I wonder if that was a regular problem for him?
HN discussion is here[1].