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Coincidence Posted 15 years ago
Vocabulary

"on the flight"

Hello,

I have difficulty understanding a fragment of the text below (the text comes from First Certificate Exam papers) :

" (...) Working night and day, Gates and a friend squeezed the language into 4K with enough space left over to run a programme. It was a task so difficult that many claimed it was impossible. The coding certainly required a high level of ingenuity.

Things were done so quickly that a bootstrap loader had to be written on the flight to deliver the completed tape. By a miracle, the tape worked when it was loaded (...) "

Is "on the flight' an idiom meaning 'very quickly' (I looked it up and haven't found in online dictionaries) or the passage simply means that sth had to be done during a flight (a plane flight) ?

Thank you!
  

Top answer

They wrote the bootstrap loader - for the Basic compiler - while on an airplane that was taking them to the company that was interested in buying the Basic compiler that Gates had written.

  • They wrote the bootstrap loader - for the Basic compiler - while on an airplane that was taking them to the company that was interested in buying the Basic compiler that Gates had written.
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6 Answers
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They wrote the bootstrap loader - for the Basic compiler - while on an airplane that was taking them to the company that was interested in buying the Basic compiler that Gates had written.
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Hi,

Yes, it isn't an idiom I'm familiar with too. What is more, I'm not sure what a "bootstrap loader" means,

but I'd say it's said informally to mean that the program had to be completed very quickly, as you suggested.

PS - In the flight, however, is an idiom, but it doesn't fit this context at all.

Regards
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Thank you.

As far as the idiom 'in a flight' is concerned, do you mean that? :
"in the first/top flight
= among the best of a particular group"

Regards.
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CoincidenceThank you.
As far as the idiom 'in a flight' is concerned, do you mean that? :
"in the first/top flight
= among the best of a particular group"
Regards.
Hi,

Exactly.

Regards
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CoincidenceIs "on the flight' an idiom meaning 'very quickly'
No. That meaning is closer to "on the fly". Close, but not the same.

I take "on the flight" to mean on the airplane flight they took in order to deliver the tape personally.

CJ
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If intended as written, it would mean that the bootstrap loader was written on the aeroplane.

The term "on the fly" - "the bootstrap loader was written on the fly" would mean the code was written while the presentation (or whatever) was happening.

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