Bootstrap

[EvilLOON]

So back in the day, I worked with a tech website that helped people troubleshoot their systems for free.  Bandwidth issues being a thing and expensive, we shut the site down and sold the domain. I digress and on to the point. 

The term bootstrap means to start the software of a computer. However, I debate where the term bootstrap came from.  Content I have read online states that it's like pulling up boot laces.   However, from old computer guys, I have heard something different. They tell me the original bootstrap was a piece of magnetic tape. The tape would be fed into the computer and this would initiate code.  They said the tape itself looked like bootstrap and hence that's what they called it.  

What is the correct history or is this something open for debate?


Love the youtube vids!

[mariushm]

Start by reading https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bootstrapping

 

[emosun]

12 minutes ago, EvilLOON said:

or is this something open for debate

debateable

but wikipedia seems to indicate that bootstrapping was already a term used before computers

Quote

The term appears to have originated in the early 19th-century United States (particularly in the phrase "pull oneself over a fence by one's bootstraps") to mean an absurdly impossible action, an adynaton.

Quote

The term was also championed by Doug Engelbart to refer to his belief that organizations could better evolve by improving the process they use for improvement (thus obtaining a compounding effect over time). 

 

[EvilLOON]

Aye, I have heard that hence the question.  The guys  I talk about the guys that wrote in binary and they were the ones that told me that.  They were programmers from the late '50s and early '60s.  This is the question. I can pull up Wiki pages all day long. It does not mean that the information is correct.  Would like to hear from people that have talked to the old timers like myself. 

Currently, in my view, the wiki reads wrong. My knowledge comes from old school coders.   I can read a wiki but want information first hand that differs from mine. The information the old timers gave me seemed pretty accurate at the time.   They described the width of the tape they were using.  They explained how it was fed into the computers at the time. Were they drawing from terms used previously or were they creating a term based on what they saw?