Mods, my apologies for being off topic but I thought the guys who hang around the root section would get a kick out of this.
I am always amazed at the programming talent of so many of you and how young so many of you are. It seems our devs and true problem solvers have to work their majic around class schedules.
Bear with me while I relay a story of how we use to do it. In the mid 70's I had to take a programming course as a degree requirement for my BA (not in computer science). It was called FORTRAN 4. Anyone heard of the language. Back then there were two main languages FORTRAN and COBALT. We who were not going any further in computer science took FORTRAN 4. Mostly it taught use how to be "literal" when we designed programs, how to flow chart, and write a small program. Our programs were full of "what if", "If, then" and "do loop" statements.
To write a program, we first flow charted it, then wrote the lines of programming, "we didn't use the phrase code back then". We actually wrote each line out on paper. No one had a computer back then, hell the one the university had was the size of a classroom and cost $500,000.
Once our program was written we then entered the computer lab and sat down at a key punch machine. We typed each line of programming on a punch card. After we finished we would check the cards for "hanging chads". Ha, you thought that was a Bush vs. Gore thing.
We would then fill out a request sheet to run our program. I don't remember how often they ran programs but you could only pick up your finished program twice a day. 10:00-10:30 and 4:00-4:30. I can remember my heart pounding when they brought you your program. If your punch cards were wrapped by a single sheet of green and white stripped computer paper that meant the program failed. If the program failed the sheet would indentify the line of code where your program stopped. Also some wise ass in the department thought it was funny to have the phrase "BAD JOB" print all over the paper.
You then had to identify the error, most of the time it was logic or a typo, retype the bad punch card and resubmit your cards for another run. Now understand that when the computer identified an error it stopped at that point. If there happen to be another error 5 cards later you would not find out until you picked your cards up again. I think the system was designed this way to discourage idiots like me from pursuing a career in computer science.
If you were finally lucky enough to have a successful run you would get your cards and computer printout back. It would include input data, programming lines (normally 150 -300 lines), and your results or answers.
Now that was Real Programming LOL!
I am always amazed at the programming talent of so many of you and how young so many of you are. It seems our devs and true problem solvers have to work their majic around class schedules.
Bear with me while I relay a story of how we use to do it. In the mid 70's I had to take a programming course as a degree requirement for my BA (not in computer science). It was called FORTRAN 4. Anyone heard of the language. Back then there were two main languages FORTRAN and COBALT. We who were not going any further in computer science took FORTRAN 4. Mostly it taught use how to be "literal" when we designed programs, how to flow chart, and write a small program. Our programs were full of "what if", "If, then" and "do loop" statements.
To write a program, we first flow charted it, then wrote the lines of programming, "we didn't use the phrase code back then". We actually wrote each line out on paper. No one had a computer back then, hell the one the university had was the size of a classroom and cost $500,000.
Once our program was written we then entered the computer lab and sat down at a key punch machine. We typed each line of programming on a punch card. After we finished we would check the cards for "hanging chads". Ha, you thought that was a Bush vs. Gore thing.
We would then fill out a request sheet to run our program. I don't remember how often they ran programs but you could only pick up your finished program twice a day. 10:00-10:30 and 4:00-4:30. I can remember my heart pounding when they brought you your program. If your punch cards were wrapped by a single sheet of green and white stripped computer paper that meant the program failed. If the program failed the sheet would indentify the line of code where your program stopped. Also some wise ass in the department thought it was funny to have the phrase "BAD JOB" print all over the paper.
You then had to identify the error, most of the time it was logic or a typo, retype the bad punch card and resubmit your cards for another run. Now understand that when the computer identified an error it stopped at that point. If there happen to be another error 5 cards later you would not find out until you picked your cards up again. I think the system was designed this way to discourage idiots like me from pursuing a career in computer science.
If you were finally lucky enough to have a successful run you would get your cards and computer printout back. It would include input data, programming lines (normally 150 -300 lines), and your results or answers.
Now that was Real Programming LOL!
.
), Tandem TAL, Icon, IBM assembler, Data General assembler, Business BASIC, Java, and probably a few others I've forgotten, lol. Plus, throw in where I spend a lot of time nowaday: ksh scripting on my Unix boxes at work.
