That WAS fun! I preceded that author by, I think, barely a year; I waffled around, changed majors twice (Religion, then Music, then Accounting), and reluctantly took one computer-programming class (PL/C) in the summer of 75. It was NOT boring, it was incredibly cool and I was instantly hooked.
Punch cards didn't seem onerous to me because I hadn't yet imagined anything better. I learned the technical tricks of the 029 (I don't know, there must have been some, no?), then learned how much better the 129 was and thought it was 'way cooler. When not doing homework I sat at a teletype, taught myself Basic and FORTRAN, and saved my work on paper tape. My fiancée resented the inordinate amount of time I spent amusing myself writing useless games and utilities just because I could. I finished my degree in Accounting but went straight into programming jobs after graduation. It was a long time before I stopped using my flowcharting template, and years more before I stopped feeling guilty about coding on the fly without flowcharting first. So, yeah, I'm happy not to use punch cards now, but I didn't think to dislike them then. I'm even happier not to have to plug a phone handset into a modem - but at the time, typing up my long, long letters electronically and sending them over a modem to my best friend at the other end of the country was an enormous improvement over sitting at my desk and writing them out with a fountain pen. And while we're on the subject, anyone else remember having to establish communication parms over a modem? You had to agree with the other end about parity bits, and about some kind of echo that I'm pretty sure we called "single" or "double" .... something. Single was when my own terminal displayed the key I typed immediately; "dual" or "double" was when it waited until it was echoed back from the other end. The lag was the downside of double; the advantage was that I could see what character actually made the trip across the chancy phone lines, and could correct errors more reliably. What was that called? I forget. Oh, and the modem protocols: XMODEM, YMODEM, Kermit and the like. I remember when I first got a 2400-baud modem; it transferred text so blindingly fast that I almost couldnt read the text as it scrolled on my screen! For the first time it might be practical to send a 100K file, if you could spare an hour or two! --- Bob Bridges, robhbrid...@gmail.com, cell 336 382-7313 /* It's extremely difficult to distinguish a Canadian from an American. In fact the most reliable way of doing so is to make that observation in the presence of a Canadian. -attributed at the Gunroom to a "British man of letters" */ -----Original Message----- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List <IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU> On Behalf Of Phil Smith III Sent: Tuesday, November 7, 2023 16:18 https://blog.computationalcomplexity.org/2023/11/in-bad-old-days-we-had-punc hcards-how.html ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
