On Oct 11, 2016, at 01:13 , John Cremona wrote: > On 11 October 2016 at 01:03, Victor Shoup <sh...@cs.nyu.edu> wrote: >> First, you are definitely wrong about punch cards. I started programming >> with Fortran on punch cards in the 70s. > > Punch cards? They were a great advance on paper tape which is what > *I* started on. To correct a typo in your program you had to read > the whole tape in, make the correction, and punch out a whole new > tape! Cards were so much easier as you could just replace one card. > That was 1970 I think....
Paper tape? Man - if only I had that when I started. *I* had to use lights and switches on the console to do I/O back then. That was on a UNIVAC 1103A, if I recall correctly...that was in 1957. When I advanced to punch cards, and handing in decks to get a run in, I would sometimes get the deck back with a pink slip on top saying "Caution: your deck may be out of order!". I eventually discovered that the last 8 or so columns could be used to serialize the deck. The sorter was my friend after that... Just had to add to the confusion! :-} As you were... Justin -- Justin C. Walker, Curmudgeon at Large Institute for the Absorption of Federal Funds ----------- I'm beginning to like the cut of his jibberish. ----------- -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "sage-devel" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to sage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
