TECO, actually.Depending on the contributor's age, that will be either sed or vi, right?
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Old farts reminiscing about computers
- Thread starter HankLloydRight
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IBM 5110. I was 15. First job via high school work exp. program (bookkeeping service - data entry). Programs were written by part time freelance programmer and were extremely buggy. Boss was very frustrated by unresponsive programmer so, since I had taken basic programming in Jr. High school (all theory, and flow charting, never touched a computer), and had taken accounting in high school, decided to debug the programs and make them more efficient. Really fun!!!
JPP
Active Member
...and that is why we used Mylar punch media for important stuff like that..lasted a lot longer in the high speed readers on the PDP 12 and 15.
Depending on the contributor's age, that will be either sed or vi, right?
What? And no mention of EMACS ?
palmer_md
Member
thecloud
As rhythm raced inside, the ship came alive
He said "text editor," not "operating system." :wink:
Started programming on an Apple ][ in college, and learned to use vi on a Sun workstation a few years later. When the Mac came along, my budding career in an unrelated field was completely derailed (as I was spending all my time on it), and I've now spent almost three decades as a software engineer.
thecloud
As rhythm raced inside, the ship came alive
You sound like a Real Programmer! (Royal McBee is now forever linked with the epic tale of Mel, the Real Programmer.)
snellenr
Member
I attended Michigan State, so I started out funneling punch card decks into a CDC 3600 followed by a CDC 6500. After a short break, I learned to interface a PDP-8e to lab instrumentation and then extended that to a grad school job interfacing a PDP-11/34 to an X-Ray Scintillometer (unfortunately, the department chose RSX-11M as an OS). After that I went to work and played with a variety of Cromemco Z-80s, HP 98xx, VAXen, Sparcs, mainframes, and PCs.
Anyone remember: GOTO (1000, 2000, 3000, 4000, 5000, 6000) IVAR ?
Anyone remember: GOTO (1000, 2000, 3000, 4000, 5000, 6000) IVAR ?
I knew this forum was filled with awesome people!
I started programming on IBM 4381, TRS-80, and PET systems. First on punched cards before moving to a IBM 3270 terminal, then finally microcomputers. We wrote research papers in the early days on a TRS-80 Model I with the expansion interface, 85K floppy, tape drive and a daisy wheel printer running DR-DOS. I still have my RS 150-in-1 Electronics kit, Timex Sinclair, IBM Peanut, and TI-99 (they all function). For my senior project in undergraduate, I used a Cray X-MP/24 to make a "movie" zooming into the Mandlebrot fractal. The FEP was a VAX and was accessed using Telnet via 2400 Baud dial-up. The Cray was orders of magnitude faster than computing frames on our lab's 80386 with math coprocessor.
Wrote ForTran 77, CICS, COBOL (WatBol), UCSD Pascal, APL, PL/1, LISP, SNOBOL, BASIC, and 370 Assembler before moving to C and BSD. Good times... Ahhh TECO, the memories of your awesomeness have faded away.
I started programming on IBM 4381, TRS-80, and PET systems. First on punched cards before moving to a IBM 3270 terminal, then finally microcomputers. We wrote research papers in the early days on a TRS-80 Model I with the expansion interface, 85K floppy, tape drive and a daisy wheel printer running DR-DOS. I still have my RS 150-in-1 Electronics kit, Timex Sinclair, IBM Peanut, and TI-99 (they all function). For my senior project in undergraduate, I used a Cray X-MP/24 to make a "movie" zooming into the Mandlebrot fractal. The FEP was a VAX and was accessed using Telnet via 2400 Baud dial-up. The Cray was orders of magnitude faster than computing frames on our lab's 80386 with math coprocessor.
Wrote ForTran 77, CICS, COBOL (WatBol), UCSD Pascal, APL, PL/1, LISP, SNOBOL, BASIC, and 370 Assembler before moving to C and BSD. Good times... Ahhh TECO, the memories of your awesomeness have faded away.
Odd how many people in this thread were born in the mid-60s (as was I). I guess I didn't get into computers much as a kid.
I went to a technical high school in Los Angeles that required us to major in something. I was in the Electronics major and in the 4th year we learned to program 6502 with machine language and had to make a 4 bit processor out of discrete parts. I went on to Cal Poly SLO where I took the east route and took Electronic Engineering. The focus was much more on hardware than software, we only had to take two fairly easy FORTRAN courses in the CS department. the rest of what I did was more analog electronics than digital.
However when I got out in the real world my first job was in a computer simulation lab at Boeing where I was assigned to maintain a bunch of embedded code originally written in assembly for the Z-80 in the late 1970s. The programmers didn't have much of a concept of modules and the bulk of the code was in one file that was as thick as a phonebook when printed out. We were running out of memory and much of my job was trying to figure out how to cut down the code so we could squeeze in more features. Hard to imagine now that we were so concerned with less than 100 bytes for both removing and for new programs.
The first computer I owned was an 80286 I built from parts from the Computer Shopper in early 1987. I found a good deal on a full height 20MB hard drive. A massive drive back in those days. It sounded like a diesel truck and I had to get on the line with tech support with Seagate to get it formatted, but the computer was very reliable. When I was done with that hard drive a friend bought it from me, wiped it and built a computer for his wife with it. Last I heard her father had it was was using it in the late 90s. That was the loudest personal computer drive I've ever seen, but it was reliable.
At Boeing the lab I worked in had originally been built to do testing for the 727 program in the early 1960s. They still had some of the original equipment around, though it wasn't getting much use. The system I was supporting fit in a 19" rack and had 20 boards in it, each one with a Z-80 and max RAM. It was a complex multi-processor system and all the programs to run it resided in a single 64KB EEPROM. The system was used to simulate one of the common data buses on commercial airliners. For the 777 program I was tasked with programming the replacement which ran on some cards bought from an outside vendor using a 68010 processor. We were using the 68040 before Apple did. Each one of the cards in the original chassis could support one input and one output channel, these new cards could support 8 in and 8 out each. I was able to cram 72 in and 72 out into one 12 inch rack and run them all full tilt in a test. Amazing how much the technology had improved.
We ran into a lot of bugs in the 68040 processors themselves. One of our guys was the greatest QI guy I've ever met. He could run down the most intermittent of bugs. He was on the phone weekly telling Motorola he'd found another bug and how exactly to reproduce it. I've though Apple users would probably never know how much he helped them before they even got their hands on the latest Mac.
I did other embedded system programming over the years, but started programming Windows in C++ about 12 years ago because it was easier to do without a lab. My current gig is a bit of a mix with 90% Windows and about 10% embedded though the software I'm working on drives hardware in the end.
As far as tough programming languages go, Malbolge is often considered the most difficult. There are some other nasty ones out there too. There's even a programming language probably inspired by Terry Pratchett's Discworld called Ook!
I went to a technical high school in Los Angeles that required us to major in something. I was in the Electronics major and in the 4th year we learned to program 6502 with machine language and had to make a 4 bit processor out of discrete parts. I went on to Cal Poly SLO where I took the east route and took Electronic Engineering. The focus was much more on hardware than software, we only had to take two fairly easy FORTRAN courses in the CS department. the rest of what I did was more analog electronics than digital.
However when I got out in the real world my first job was in a computer simulation lab at Boeing where I was assigned to maintain a bunch of embedded code originally written in assembly for the Z-80 in the late 1970s. The programmers didn't have much of a concept of modules and the bulk of the code was in one file that was as thick as a phonebook when printed out. We were running out of memory and much of my job was trying to figure out how to cut down the code so we could squeeze in more features. Hard to imagine now that we were so concerned with less than 100 bytes for both removing and for new programs.
The first computer I owned was an 80286 I built from parts from the Computer Shopper in early 1987. I found a good deal on a full height 20MB hard drive. A massive drive back in those days. It sounded like a diesel truck and I had to get on the line with tech support with Seagate to get it formatted, but the computer was very reliable. When I was done with that hard drive a friend bought it from me, wiped it and built a computer for his wife with it. Last I heard her father had it was was using it in the late 90s. That was the loudest personal computer drive I've ever seen, but it was reliable.
At Boeing the lab I worked in had originally been built to do testing for the 727 program in the early 1960s. They still had some of the original equipment around, though it wasn't getting much use. The system I was supporting fit in a 19" rack and had 20 boards in it, each one with a Z-80 and max RAM. It was a complex multi-processor system and all the programs to run it resided in a single 64KB EEPROM. The system was used to simulate one of the common data buses on commercial airliners. For the 777 program I was tasked with programming the replacement which ran on some cards bought from an outside vendor using a 68010 processor. We were using the 68040 before Apple did. Each one of the cards in the original chassis could support one input and one output channel, these new cards could support 8 in and 8 out each. I was able to cram 72 in and 72 out into one 12 inch rack and run them all full tilt in a test. Amazing how much the technology had improved.
We ran into a lot of bugs in the 68040 processors themselves. One of our guys was the greatest QI guy I've ever met. He could run down the most intermittent of bugs. He was on the phone weekly telling Motorola he'd found another bug and how exactly to reproduce it. I've though Apple users would probably never know how much he helped them before they even got their hands on the latest Mac.
I did other embedded system programming over the years, but started programming Windows in C++ about 12 years ago because it was easier to do without a lab. My current gig is a bit of a mix with 90% Windows and about 10% embedded though the software I'm working on drives hardware in the end.
As far as tough programming languages go, Malbolge is often considered the most difficult. There are some other nasty ones out there too. There's even a programming language probably inspired by Terry Pratchett's Discworld called Ook!
Here's my one real contribution to the lore of "old farts in computing": Real Programmers Don't Use Pascal
thecloud
As rhythm raced inside, the ship came alive
I relate more to the "You Might Be an Engineer If..."
http://anengineersaspect.blogspot.com/2009/08/you-might-be-engineer-if.html
http://anengineersaspect.blogspot.com/2009/08/you-might-be-engineer-if.html
I started working with home microcomputers at age 7 and instantly took to them, especially data communications. I was fortunate enough to have older mentors in the IT industry who gave me access to such things as minicomputers and mainframes. I learned System/34 OCL and RPG-2 just prior to high school, and went on from there...
I personally own(ed) a wide array of home computers: Sinclair ZX-81, TI-99/4A, TRS-80 Models 1/3/4, TRS-80 Color Computer 1/2/3, Atari 800XL, Commodore 64 & VIC-20, along with many homebrewed x86 machines from parts out of Computer Shopper. I still have a few rolls of paper tape (somewhere) from my Teletype 33 experiences, although I imagine it would likely fall apart at this point.
Although I am happy to have skipped the PASCAL generation, I do admit to the occasional BASIC hacks on the microcomputers, although primarily I tended to work with assembly and C. I loved the 6800 and 68k processors and hated the 6502 with a passion.
My early career involved a stint at Pyramid Technology, manufacturer of large-scale SMP and MPP systems, working in their IT organization but I did a lot of side work porting GNU stuff to their proprietary RISC and MIPS RISC platforms.
Some of you might recognize these larger systems recently exhibited at the Large Scale Systems Museum:
https://www.facebook.com/LSSM-large-scale-systems-museum-503408869821526/
...and reminiscing, I came across this - successful IPL of the System/34, although I spent many hours in front of the machine with IBM MAP books, trying to figure out crazy Machine Checks:
System/34 - IMPL/IPL - Blinkenlights! - YouTube
I personally own(ed) a wide array of home computers: Sinclair ZX-81, TI-99/4A, TRS-80 Models 1/3/4, TRS-80 Color Computer 1/2/3, Atari 800XL, Commodore 64 & VIC-20, along with many homebrewed x86 machines from parts out of Computer Shopper. I still have a few rolls of paper tape (somewhere) from my Teletype 33 experiences, although I imagine it would likely fall apart at this point.
Although I am happy to have skipped the PASCAL generation, I do admit to the occasional BASIC hacks on the microcomputers, although primarily I tended to work with assembly and C. I loved the 6800 and 68k processors and hated the 6502 with a passion.
My early career involved a stint at Pyramid Technology, manufacturer of large-scale SMP and MPP systems, working in their IT organization but I did a lot of side work porting GNU stuff to their proprietary RISC and MIPS RISC platforms.
Some of you might recognize these larger systems recently exhibited at the Large Scale Systems Museum:
https://www.facebook.com/LSSM-large-scale-systems-museum-503408869821526/
...and reminiscing, I came across this - successful IPL of the System/34, although I spent many hours in front of the machine with IBM MAP books, trying to figure out crazy Machine Checks:
System/34 - IMPL/IPL - Blinkenlights! - YouTube
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