Re: [vcf-midatlantic] Perhaps I asked the wrong question...
On Fri, 20 Jan 2017, Alexander Pierson via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
At the same time I was wrestling with that, I did a historical paper on Pascal. In the process of researching it, I think that was the first time I was exposed to the concept of writing out a program by hand with pencil and paper before entering it onto a computer. That blew my mind, seeing as never thought of a time before text editors and glass terminals. I'm so used to instant gratification of finding syntactical errors and compiling at the drop of a hat. Then again, that dates me as an individual...
I should really give the alternative a try some time for the sake of perspective.
Welcome to the early 1970s. :-) Write your FORTRAN program down on coding forms: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/18/FortranCodingForm.png Then head to the keypunch room and punch your deck. Take it to the dispatch area and submit your job to the dispatcher. Come back in minutes or hours, depending on the load, and retrieve your deck and printout. Review the output for syntax errors, keypunch errors and logic errors. Return to the keypunch room and punch new cards to fix the errors. Lather, rinse and repeat. While punched cards and keypunches trigger my nostalgia, I also prefer the "instant gratification" of frequent compilation. Mike Loewen mloewen@cpumagic.scol.pa.us Old Technology http://q7.neurotica.com/Oldtech/
On Fri, Jan 20, 2017 at 8:28 AM, Mike Loewen via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org> wrote:
On Fri, 20 Jan 2017, Alexander Pierson via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
At the same time I was wrestling with that, I did a historical paper on
Pascal. In the process of researching it, I think that was the first time I was exposed to the concept of writing out a program by hand with pencil and paper before entering it onto a computer. That blew my mind, seeing as never thought of a time before text editors and glass terminals. I'm so used to instant gratification of finding syntactical errors and compiling at the drop of a hat. Then again, that dates me as an individual...
I should really give the alternative a try some time for the sake of
perspective.
Welcome to the early 1970s. :-) Write your FORTRAN program down on coding forms:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/18/FortranCodingForm.png
Then head to the keypunch room and punch your deck. Take it to the dispatch area and submit your job to the dispatcher. Come back in minutes or hours, depending on the load, and retrieve your deck and printout. Review the output for syntax errors, keypunch errors and logic errors. Return to the keypunch room and punch new cards to fix the errors. Lather, rinse and repeat.
While punched cards and keypunches trigger my nostalgia, I also prefer the "instant gratification" of frequent compilation.
Mike Loewen mloewen@cpumagic.scol.pa.us Old Technology http://q7.neurotica.com/Oldtech/
When reading about this stuff while in school then, In 1975, I caught my first glimpse at our school computer a Honeywell 1646, its a dual H-316, same one used for the IMP in Arpanet And the computer lab was already equipped with teletypes, and the LA36 DecWriter II terminals, Only the sys.admin there had access to the punched card machines, within the computer room and then a couple years later we got some LA120 terminals 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 But not that many, the ratio was still high for the teletypes and LA120s 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 But that was short lived, since those were for their legacy machines, they were already moving beyond that with the new systems built before the end of the 70s Dan
On 01/20/2017 08:28 AM, Mike Loewen via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
On Fri, 20 Jan 2017, Alexander Pierson via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
At the same time I was wrestling with that, I did a historical paper on Pascal. In the process of researching it, I think that was the first time I was exposed to the concept of writing out a program by hand with pencil and paper before entering it onto a computer. That blew my mind, seeing as never thought of a time before text editors and glass terminals. I'm so used to instant gratification of finding syntactical errors and compiling at the drop of a hat. Then again, that dates me as an individual...
I should really give the alternative a try some time for the sake of perspective.
Welcome to the early 1970s. :-) Write your FORTRAN program down on coding forms:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/18/FortranCodingForm.png
I get in a lot of trouble when I'm engineering something because before I start doing, I start planning. I sit down and think first. My boss had a fit with me until I explained that I will be on schedule even though I had physically to show. I find it hard to believe that people can start doing without planning first. So the paper and pen (white board, markers and a camera) are my preferred method of starting a project. -- Linux Home Automation Neil Cherry ncherry@linuxha.com http://www.linuxha.com/ Main site http://linuxha.blogspot.com/ My HA Blog Author of: Linux Smart Homes For Dummies
participants (3)
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Dan Roganti -
Mike Loewen -
Neil Cherry