Hacker News Reader

Comment by codalan | Hacker News Reader

I wish they would have named it something else.

https://www.developershome.com/sms/atCommandsIntro.asp

I feel a bit bad about that. I'm 36 and I'm the oldest on the team, but Usenet was before me (which seems to be why it's widely known? though I see it's more than that). Googling brought up the Hayes commands but we had no idea it was this strong of an association.

It's probably still in great use with telemetry devices.

I worked at a small company that developed GPS + Cellular devices. Most of the firmware I worked on processed AT commands, either off the RS232 serial bus, or the network adapter. These devices were either deployed to remote locations for monitoring, or on vehicles for tracking purposes. Basically all the commands to get data or execute commands were customized AT commands.

It is still used in ESP8266 based ESP-01 WiFi boards that people connect to Arduino and the like to make it an IOT device. AT commands that it support allows you to connect to wifi and then establish TCP/UDP.

As far as I'm aware most modems use these commands, even very new and high end ones.

I actually used AT commands to call BBSes and... ignore these people. We shouldn't turn civilization into a museum. It's fine to reuse old names for new things.

Same here & concur. Even the AT commands weren't typically called "AT protocol".

It's even more valuable for people to be challenged, & upgrade their skill, at context-based disambiguation than to further ossify short names. The preeminence of the `@` symbol in social-network addressing – from email through Twitter & everywhere – also makes this a well-chosen name.

+++ATH

For better or worse, AT commands are still alive and well, along with mainframes, COBOL, and OS/2.

They'll probably outlive me. They'll probably outlive all of us.

AT stands for ATTENTION. In command mode, it configures the modem for data transfer. It is an excellent name for a social network protocol.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com