This is where I started computer programming, 50 years ago. I’m amazed that I lasted in the industry as long as I did (and not at all sad that I retired a few years ago).
@ffmike You have me beat by 10 years, but I did some FORTRAN 77 coding in high school that was saved on not-floppy discs measuring roughly a foot in diameter and at least an inch thick. (Let me tell you kids they were darned inconvenient to have to carry around on horseback.)
@dwalbert Oh yeah, I remember those giant drive platters…used some at Wang Labs at my first real industry job. Also used punched paper tape there for data transfer…I got to know hanging chads long before they were a political issue.
@dwalbert @ffmike Worked on a DEC PDP-8: to start it up, you entered some binary code with toggle switches, which enabled a paper tape reader. The code on the tape enabled mounting & reading one of those foot-wide hard discs you describe, which (at last) loaded the OS.
I lived in the Boston area, home to the dominant companies DEC, Wang, Data General. All gone now, a reminder that someday there will be no Apple, Microsoft, Google, etc.
@JohnBrady @dwalbert I could talk about bootstrapping the OS on to a Heathkit H89 I guess. Or the horrors of using cassette tapes for storage on a timeshare system. But we’re gonna drive all the kids out of the room at this rate!
The long-term experience does tend to give some perspective, for sure. Also: I don’t see how anyone learns to code these days! It was easier when you could understand everything from the logic gates on up.
@dwalbert @ffmike @JohnBrady @manton Thanks for the walk down memory lane! It was great to read Gary Kildall’s brief history of CP/M. What a great time it was to be alive!