I too remember typing in my college programming jobs on an 029 Key Punch and submitting them over the counter at the computer center. That old IBM 360/67 had less processing power than my laptop. A "high-Level" language was FORTRAN. C++ didn't exist. In fact, there were no if-then-else, do-while, and other constructs until they invented Structured FORTRAN.
I joined technical writing when they were using Wang Word Processing. When PCs arrived we tested both MS Word and WordPerfect and even then rejected Word as unsuitable. (At least THAT hasn't changed.) DOS 1.0 was an operating system it was possible to know everything about. Now it's too complicated to know everything about an OpSys unless you do that for a living. I think the notion that us old timers know more about how things work underneath has merit. I took a print shop course in High School and learned stuff about typefaces and setting type (manually) that helps me even today. FrameMaker, for all it's odd little quirks, is still pretty damn good. Jim Light -----Original Message----- From: framers-bounces+jlight=pillardata....@lists.frameusers.com [mailto:framers-bounces+jlight=pillardata.com at lists.frameusers.com] On Behalf Of Steve Rickaby Sent: Thursday, March 30, 2006 2:17 PM To: framers at FrameUsers.com Subject: RE: Funny At 11:51 -0800 30/3/06, Joe Malin wrote: >Did computer science in grad school. On a mainframe (double ugh). No >dial-up; had ride downtown to the computer lab to get on a terminal, >then hang around until 2 AM so turnaround on jobs was less than 20 >minutes. Had to wait until *3 AM* to get access to the computer graphics >equipment. Oh boy, it's good to know I'm not the only old codger here. Your job takes more than 4 minutes of core time? Hey, wait till tomorrow, buddy: at 5 am we'll run your JCL, which will error on line 5, so that by the time you get in, *the whole printer room* will be full of your error listings! And if you're really lucky, you can repeat the whole thing tomorrow night too! >I wouldn't wish any of it on a blind dog. I'm not "better" for having >done it the hard way, just probably more burned out and less educated. Don't be quite so sure. We had to *understand* how things worked. Today, who has a hope? How many college undergrads could explain to you the workings of their iPods? That's their loss and our gain. And working in and around IT, we have to learn something every day. It keeps you young. (My first computer? A DEC PDP12, a two-tone lime green beast that looked as if it had been cobbled together in a film studio's props department - and was about as much use as if it had.) -- Steve _______________________________________________ You are currently subscribed to Framers as jlight at pillardata.com. Send list messages to framers at lists.frameusers.com. To unsubscribe send a blank email to framers-unsubscribe at lists.frameusers.com or visit http://lists.frameusers.com/mailman/options/framers/jlight%40pillardata. com Send administrative questions to lisa at frameusers.com. Visit http://www.frameusers.com/ for more resources and info.