Actually, Joe, putting in any serious program using toggle switches without anything like a BACKSPACE was very hard as I often had to abort and start again. Doing it twice the same way, Argh!!!!!!!!!!!!
Luckily, I only had to do it a few times to learn just like I had to write assembler programs or feed in programs from paper tape or from punch cards. Most of us have moved on stage by stage and now tools like Python or libraries and modules often at higher levels are more the norm. Can you imagine taking any modern program in digital form as zeroes and ones and entering it by hand? Some are huge and especially if anything like shared libraries also has to be keyed in. But reminiscing is getting away from the point of expressing our sarcasm about one of the people that makes us want to segregate this forum as one way to not get into silly discussions like this! -----Original Message----- From: Python-list <python-list-bounces+avigross=verizon....@python.org> On Behalf Of Joe Pfeiffer Sent: Thursday, May 6, 2021 3:03 PM To: python-list@python.org Subject: Re: Bloody rubbish Skip Montanaro <skip.montan...@gmail.com> writes: >> >> Machine language is so much simpler, and you can code with just a hexpad. >> > > Pshaa... All you need are front panel switches. ;-) (Yes, I had a > professor who required is to 'key' in our programs on the front panel, > of a rack mounted PDP-11 as I recall. Needless to say, we didn't use > an assembler either. We just wrote raw opcodes and their arguments on > paper. This was in the late 70s.) That's right about whn I had to do that for one assignment (on a Nova). Hand-assembling, toggling in, and debugging a program on the front panel was a valuable learning exercise. Doing it a second time wouldn't have been helpful... One nice thing was the computer had core memory, and the students made an agreement as to who got which part. You could work for a while, shut the machine down, come back the next day, power it up, and your program would still be there. -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
