Roganti:

about that same time, we got those new Hazeltine 1500 teminals, that was really sweet trying out some new code with the Esc control seqences on the CRT

I remember a similar exultation when my school replaced a TTY with an ADM3a featuring lower case and full cursor control! A lot of code had that hard-coded, thus programs being tied to their hardware. That's particularly true of the early hobbyist programs, even with CP/M. Some programs such as WordStar had a configuration program to set the terminal and printer. Even now, Microsoft Windows folks struggle to find drivers for peripherals. Linux is not guiltless but is a lot less brittle thanks to the Unix evolution of termcap and terminfo.

so in school we really skipped over the punch card scene, it wasn't until my first job did I actually get my hands on the punched card machines

During a consulting assignment on an IBM system 3, I had access to a card sorter and the related sorting trays. That taught me what's now called the "radix sort" and gave me insights into the earier era of accounting machines. A lot of card juggling there, not by the box but by the palette! What hath thou caused us, oh Mr. Hollerith!