On Fri, Feb 26, 2016 at 8:06 PM, Nigel Williams < [email protected]> wrote:
> For William's benefit, in those times computers were (chronically) few > in number. > And very valuable - cost big bucks (millions). Computer time was often "billed" out to people. > Anyone from that era will remember the endless booking > problems getting time on a machine of any size. If you were willing to > do the graveyard shift you gained a small amount of scheduling > flexibility (if the machine wasn't down for maintenance / resting > etc). > Or more importantly, you could arrange to have standalone time. As a system's programmer, I used to do the weekend based mid-night shift at the computer center. But we could keep beer cold under the raised floor too. But we got the system all to ourselves - particularly if you could get the weekly backups done. Then the time from after the backups finish until 8 AM was yours. Some of our best hacks and most useful learning took place then, but computer time was precious. Clem
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