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To: P.O.E.

I took one programming course, about 5 years after I graduated from College. It was in Basic.

When I was in College (graduated in 1970) they taught Cobal and Fortran, not much else. I have a Business management degree, only a few people specialized in that. It took punch cards to enter the programs. Not even green screen terminals.

That was back in the days of the Z80 CPU’s. Which addressed a maximum of 64K of RAM. (without bank switching)

But it worked really well. The really efficient software then were machine language stuff or carefully compiled software.

Odly, we had lots and lots of software around.

Now, we die with complexity. It is maddening. Such a waste of capacity.


100 posted on 10/15/2020 8:16:38 PM PDT by Texas Fossil ((Texas is not where you were born, but a Free State of Heart, Mind & Attitude!))
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To: Texas Fossil

The dreaded punch cards. You’d have a stack of 300 or so of them, drop in the college computer center. Wait about 3 hours for the bundled up printout (inkjet on the green-and white striped sprocket paper) only to find one of your cards was defective. Back to the keypunch machine, then drop the new stack and wait some more.

We were thrilled when they finally came out with the computer terminal for typing in programs. Of course, we immediately discovered pings and chats and computer games that ate up our time.


104 posted on 10/16/2020 3:22:32 PM PDT by P.O.E. (Pray for America)
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