Punch cards

[Ric Moore]

On Sun, 2008-04-06 at 18:51 -0500, John Thompson wrote:
> On 2008-04-04, Robert Rabinoff <rar113 at columbia.edu> wrote:
> 
> > When I first learned to program in 1964 we used an IBM 1620, fondly known
> > as CADET (Can't Add, Doesn't Even Try). 
> 
> Heh. My one-and-only formal computer class was learning FORTRAN, which 
> we ran on an IBM 1620. The computer had more important things to do than 
> run student programs, so we would write them out in spiral bound 
> notebooks in class and as homework, then come to the computer center 
> after hours when the keypunches weren't being used for more important 
> work, punch the cards and put them in the job queue to be run over night 
> (we weren't allowed to touch the sacred computer). The next day we'd 
> come back for the job printout (on wide greenbar paper, of course), 
> peruse the errors in our programs, punch new cards, drop them in the 
> queue and repeat until it worked. 

Heh, no wonder we had a computer revolution. Just to get rid of the
BOH's! Ric

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