Are there any teenager?

[QIII]

IBM punch cards.

Lisati an I are about the same age. I may have a year or two on him.

Anyway, punch cards are where we got in on the fun in the mid 70s. Mag tape was around, but it was expensive.

[flaymond]

It's like an age before Printer (that use ink to print the information on the papers). So, it can be used to 'punchs' Fortran codes?

[lisati]

The first mainframes I had any experience with used line printers which printed a complete line at a time AND punch cards which had separate devices that worked independently of the printer. The rooms were usually air-conditioned, quite a different environment to my lounge with a laptop on a student desk, another laptop on a nearby table, a 15+ year old disused desktop under a table, assorted mobile phones, and assorted media devices (VCR, DVD player etc) under the TV.

[bashiergui]

It's like an age before Printer (that use ink to print the information on the papers). So, it can be used to 'punchs' Fortran codes?

It required the programmers to write in binary on the punch cards. :S


I'm a dork so I was curious what binary "hello world" looks like. Here it is
01001000 01100101 01101100 01101100 01101111 00100000 01110111 01101111 01110010 01101100 01100100 00100001

[flaymond]

That make sense of why High-Level Programming Language created.

[lisati]

No. The computers read the punch cards sort of like a computer today reads a CD. The punch cards were the software. Which required the programmers to write in binary. :S


I'm a dork so I was curious what binary "hello world" looks like. Here it is
01001000 01100101 01101100 01101100 01101111 00100000 01110111 01101111 01110010 01101100 01100100 00100001

Nice comparison.

Thankfully by the time I started using them, there were card punch machines with alphanumeric capabilities. One approach was to type up your program, together with some special cards identifying the user, which program(s) to run (e.g. compiler) and your data. You'd submit your deck of cards (don't drop it, or you'll have a computer version of "pick up 52"), wait for an hour or two, and your printout would be returned to you.

[bashiergui]

Nice comparison.

Thankfully by the time I started using them, there were card punch machines with alphanumeric capabilities. One approach was to type up your program, together with some special cards identifying the user, which program(s) to run (e.g. compiler) and your data. You'd submit your deck of cards (don't drop it, or you'll have a computer version of "pick up 52"), wait for an hour or two, and your printout would be returned to you.

That sounds slighly better. Debugging a binary program would be a special kind of hell.

[mastablasta]

Anyway, punch cards are where we got in on the fun in the mid 70s. Mag tape was around, but it was expensive.

when I was in kindergarden (sometime in beginning of the 80's) during holidays season we were in another building (another kindergarden). whiel playing there we (or was it I?) came up on a closed cupboard and inside there were these cards with holes punched in them. they were neatly stacked and held together in a kind of tape of cards. they were all same size and shape. nice relatively hard cartonboard. so one of us (again I could have been the initiator) decided it was a good idea to rip them into individual card and then use them as "money". and so we did. we exchanged the money, played shop and all until the teacher saw us. she immediately called others and all had this horrified stare. who did this? who got the idea? who allowed this? what did you do? etc. were the questions. none of us knew what the fuss was all about I mean they were just a bunch of carton cards

I found out later (a few years later) while reading my encyclopedia books that punch cards were used as memory cards. it was only then when I realised what we did and understood why there was such a panic about a bunch of cards.

if only they told us what they were. until then I thought that computer data is stored only on cassette tapes (i had & still have a spectrum) or if you had a lot of money you could put the data on a floppy. must be they had some old machine or something.

[adam_smith3]

I'm a 14 year old girl. I use Ubuntu on my brother Adam's account

[nerdtron]

Wow you people are really old!

Sorry! Just kidding!

I started Ubuntu and Linux in general when I'm in engineering college. I'm 18 that time.
That was just about 5 years ago.