I learned COBOL in college back in 1968 by using punch
cards. You wrote out your lines of code on coding
sheets then stood in line to get a turn on the keypunch
machine. Then take your bundle of cards to the admin.
building basement and submitted your cards to the "computer
technician", who ran your program while the machine was idle
from doing "real" stuff. Then you went back the next morning
an got your printout and found your errors and you tagged your
bad lines of code, and then back to the keypunch machine, and
on and on. We had an IBM 360 then, it was soon replaced with
some Honeywell beast.
Ten years later I got my first "personal computer" an Apple ][
with 4K of RAM and an audio cassette recorder to record the programs.
My "library of files" consisted of a shoe box of audio cassettes. I
worked for Uncle Sam then and had my very own Internet account too,
even used it from home a few times with my 300 baud modem with the
acoustical coupler (a rubber thingy to stick you phone handset into).
I still live in the sticks with a 24K phone line, and waiting for the
satellites to get here! :-)
vern
Mark Weaver wrote:
>
> honestly I can't begin to imagine writting a program on punch
> cards. seems to me that something like that would take literally forever!
>
> --
> Mark
>
> ** Registered Linux user # 182496 **
>
>
>
