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View Full Version : APL, Cobol, Fortran, RPG, ...


Richard
06-10-2008, 12:01 AM
Since AnnaJW is confessing to be an RPG addict, I must confess that Fortran and teco are/were my specialties. Nowadays I put up with the "vi" editor from GNU. I still have the label from my old Teleray monitor. :D Let's hear from some of you other card punchers! And don't try to tell us you found the bug in the Univac -- Grace Hopper is dead!

Chironex
04-18-2009, 08:08 PM
Richard, you're scaring me!

Michael_Andrew
04-18-2009, 08:37 PM
I use to program in dBase. Did a little in basic. Started on a Commodore 64. Then had an Apple IIe. Upgraded to a PC with thing call a hard drive with a whopping 10 meg. I had a resident once that said he was learning to program. I ask what language. He said "Mostly English but sometimes in Spanish."

saltydad
04-18-2009, 10:10 PM
I started with an IBM PCjr; had no hard drive and was slower than hell.

JoeReal
04-19-2009, 12:36 AM
I never had the opportunity to program in VAX or other mainframe type platforms, just the time I started programming as a hobby, the PC history started to unfold right before me. Well, I used to program in hardware C, we have to hand compile everything, and enter the machine hex codes unto the single board microprocessor and then have it etched unto the Eprom. Talk about pain in your brain, this is the ultimate Professor's torture in College.

About time we also had the 6502 washing machine processor that Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak have creatively used for Applesoft. And so I learned the higher but thousand times slower to execute languages, but hey, it gets the job done than those seniors lining up at our computer center to submit their punch cards! About a couple of years into my engineering degree, I was already receiving good money from various international organization, developing various kinds of statistical programs that can beat the punch card colleagues of mine, and all running in Apple IIe, with only 16 KB of memory. I used to write very miser programs that can analyze data very fast and huge amount of data at that time, and so the slow computer and limited memory are never a problem for me. I program in C, Fortran, all dialects of BASIC language at that time, JRT Pascal, Turbo Pascal, dBASE, and also some low level machine language tricks which can end me in jail.

Then came the Z80 microprocessors, and the Tandy Radioshack. I even loved the advanced true multi-tasking capabilities of Motorolla's 68000 series of microprocessors, and found its way into Xenix OS. Then came the PC's with 2-floppy drives. Oh boy, it was fun! Then came the $15,000 IBM PC/XT with 10 MB hard drive and monochrome monitor, and I was the PC king of our Department! But at that time, the Apple Mac was born and was really light years ahead than Windows. Everything evolved quickly when someone has legally cloned the IBM-PC, and together with Intel, the PC history unfolded from there.

I still write many proprietary computer programs. All kinds of computer programs, from statistics, fluid mechanics, chemical and physical properties of various industrial substances, mechanical engineering to operations research, genetic analyses, electronic fund transfer, database mining, write and build our custom database engine servers and web servers from scratch, server monitoring software, write our own middle-tier servers without the need to pay any connection or license taxes, etc..... I equip our programmers with software components nowadays. I still write client and backend server systems but don't deal with a lot of user interfaces nowadays. I primarily turn our programmers into even better programmers. Our servers are not really what they seem to be....

Gone are the days when you have to be happy with just a few bytes of memory to make your program super-fast and super-efficient. Today, you have terrabytes of memories, and Windows keeps devolving to eat more of it. Gone are the efficient ways of hard-core programming. Many are doing scripts nowadays, and it gets the job done in quicker time, without applying much brain power. Microsoft has just to tell Intel to crank up the memories and computer speed. There is no need for brain power programming anymore. I am at last outdated.

lorax
04-19-2009, 01:47 AM
I'm a BASIC geek, myself. I used to write COBOL but I gave that up. I still have my IIe, though.

chong
04-19-2009, 02:10 AM
Geez . . . You guys make me feel so old!

Joe, you think that you're outdated???? I was one of the first 16 non-IBM employee programmers, trained by IBM in the Philippines in 1964. We were trained in Mnemonic Language programming system (I bet all y'all have never heard of this one!) for the IBM 1401 Computer (which was copied by Fujitsu and called theirs: Fujitsu 10). This language was like a precursor to Cobol and Basic. After learning machine language, we were then trained in programming the "newer" IBM 360 Computer!

This training actually came in handy because it gave me greater credentials applying for work as an engineer in the US from the Philippines. I was the first engineer hired by Boeing directly from the Philippines in 1966. My co-workers at Boeing could hardly believe that someone from the Philippines knew computer programming.

Then despite completing a scholarship in Urban Planning at UC-Berkeley during a 19-month lay-off in 1970-71, I still found it difficult to find a job in engineering or Urban Planning, so I decided to put in applications for jobs in computer programming. I was hired by a Minority Trade School in late November of 1971 as an Instructor of, among others, Computer Programming and Computer Operations courses. This school was financed by the big companies in the Seattle area, and IBM was one of the bigger contributors. I wanted to tell about this because IBM furnished all the equipment in our "Service Bureau" which consisted of 25 Keypunch machines, Keyboard (looked like a big IBM Selectric typewriter), 2 disk drives (BIG!), two tape drives (what a pain!), and an IBM 360 Computer with, get this, 16K RAM! We could not get even a simple payroll program to run on this machine . . . .

Can you all imagine how I felt, when I got my first PC that had 256K RAM, Dual floppies, and a 10 Meg HD?

lorax
04-19-2009, 02:15 AM
Thanks for making me feel younger, Chong. I started on IIes and Ataris (never had a Commodore of my own, but I used to steal time on a friend's while he played frogger on my Atari). You can imagine how thrilled I was to get my first 386DX. I've since returned to my roots - Apple forever!

chong
04-19-2009, 03:22 AM
You're welcome, Beth. But again, gee whiz - you're talking Atari and Commodore, that's like in the mid-70's. And my kids were using those to play "that yellow thingie that ate those other thingies." Then came the "Mario Brothers"! Oh! I remember the yellow thingie - "Pac Man"!

Still want to feel much younger after that? What about my first computer - the mini - "Sinclair", huh?? I used a cassette tape recorder for my storage device! I actually programmed in Basic with that for heating and air conditioning load calculations. Though I don't know if I gained anything by doing that compared to doing it manually and with a calculator. Even with the TI SR-10 calculator, I think manually was faster than it. And the HP 350 and 450 would have been much, much faster even. But those HPs were beyond my reach.

In the early 80s, I worked with an engineering company in Anchorage that had the Carrier air conditioning software program that ran on, again get this, the TRS(trash)-80! At the time, an IBM PC would still cost $8K-10K, while the Trash-80 was around $1.5K and it was packaged with the engineering software program by the Carrier Corporation. Competitive programs from other companies utilized the PC but was inter-active with mainframe computers in their respective headquarters, requiring "very expensive" modems, and enormous fees. Carrier's was a stand alone system, though initially, it too, used a tape cassette for data storage device.

If you want to feel even much younger than that . . . . before they taught us computer programming, we had to learn how to "wire" the boards of the IBM Accounting Machines. And that, dear folks, was the "mother" of all computers as we know it today! That's where the IBM punch cards with one notched corner was first used. The first machines used vacuum tubes before being replaced by transistors in 1958. I could tell you that I worked as an Accounting Machine Operator-Programmer, but that would be a stretch!

lorax
04-19-2009, 10:22 AM
Atari and Commodore were the 80's for me in Canada. I got the 386DX in the early 90's and we stayed in PCland for quite some time, until I got thoroughly fed up with my P2 and threw it off the roof. I now have a pair of MacBooks and am saving for an iMac.

Caloosamusa
04-19-2009, 03:29 PM
iMacs are fantastic! Mine is strictly used for video editing. The only time I go online with it is to get updates. I use a laptop for all other needs.

To stay true to the thread, No wrecking, I learned Fortran IV when key punch cards were used. I learned a lot! I think my TI 84plus Silver addition (that has gotten me through CalcII) has more capacity than the school computer I learned Fortran on!

Best wishes :2239:

lorax
04-19-2009, 04:32 PM
If you really really want to talk nerdiness, though.... I didn't have a pocket caclulator until advanced astrophysics (when I got a TI 89). I had a slide rule!

Caloosamusa
04-19-2009, 07:41 PM
I apologise for my nerdiness Beth, best wishes to you, and Astrophysics are a couple of classes I hope to take when I transfer. :2239:

lorax
04-19-2009, 08:32 PM
No need to apologize for nerdiness! Nerds of the .org unite! Nyaaaaaa....

Nerds make the most interesting friends, antisocial though we may be. Who else is there out there to talk to about large number theory as it applies to cryptographic method? And then in the next breath talk about chess?

(some of you know that I rejected the opportunity to join Mensa for that very reason, but hey. I also enjoy kayaking and rebuilding cars, and they found that odd.)

harveyc
04-20-2009, 12:32 AM
Geez . . . You guys make me feel so old!


Chong, you really are old!!! Beats the alternative, though, since we like having you around! :D

I did some Cobol and Fortran programming back in he late 70s but it's all a foggy memory!

Harvey

chong
04-20-2009, 12:58 AM
Chong, you really are old!!! Beats the alternative, though, since we like having you around! :D

I did some Cobol and Fortran programming back in he late 70s but it's all a foggy memory!

Harvey

And you say that I'm old ! ! ! ! ! They say that memory is the second to go when you grow old. So, there. who's old now?

harveyc
04-20-2009, 01:44 AM
It's not gone yet, just a little foggy! ;)

Bananaman88
04-20-2009, 06:27 AM
Beth,

I would never say you are antisocial or nerd, for that matter.

alpha010
04-20-2009, 07:48 AM
Wow, been a long time since I've heard the ancient form of geekinese!!! I'm almost too young to even remember those! My first programming experiences were Cold fusion and the very early releases of Bloodshed full dev kit and very very little assembly.

Shaggy

Richard
11-15-2009, 10:50 PM
Damn! I upgraded the memory on my PC recently and my "vi" editor is now causing other programs to crash. It must have been written with some outdated concepts of of memory buffers. I had to uninstall it. Crap! Now when I want to do some guru editing my only resort is Perl. Drat!

Jack Daw
11-16-2009, 06:01 AM
Programming, ay?
C in hardware applications, microchips, microprocessors and no/small OS.
C++ for more pleasureful and enjoyable work with OS (Win and Lin, sorry Mac...).

I use nothing that was here before or that came after these. They are just the perfect, complex and powerful kernel of all that is out there.

Oh, yeah, Assembler - for the university, but no real application.

Richard
11-16-2009, 10:06 AM
Programming, ay?
C in hardware applications, microchips, microprocessors and no/small OS.
C++ for more pleasureful and enjoyable work with OS (Win and Lin, sorry Mac...).

I use nothing that was here before or that came after these. They are just the perfect, complex and powerful kernel of all that is out there.

Oh, yeah, Assembler - for the university, but no real application.

Prior to C, assembler was the method of choice (over binary!) for hardware. So out of necessity I learned the HP and IBM assemblers of the '60's which became the basis for all assemblers of the computer boom of the 80's. As of late everyone and their brother has written a C assembler for IC programming. I agree, C is a powerhouse in this area.

During that era, assembler was important in computationally intensive applications. Even in supercomputer applications we would re-write the core of some programs in assembler to reduce the computation time from weeks to days. Since then, both the chip speeds and compiler technology has drastically improved. It is the compiler technology from Sun Microsystems, IBM, and the former Cray that I salute! By the 90's we would look at the compiler-generated assembler and find no room for improvement -- in fact often better code than we would have written.

Richard
10-28-2014, 08:23 PM
Today I went to Staples and bought a memory stick, 16GB for $7.99 + tax. Twenty years ago at the supercomputer center we bought 16GB of disk drives for one of our computers. The total cost of the drives was over $5M and required 1000 sq.ft. of floor space in an air cooled environment. :D

boffcheck
10-29-2014, 07:41 AM
XD since I read this post I feel like I just finished school.. ;) I'm only a newbe to Java programming.. 2 years in University.. but fun tho.. :)

I only can remember my first grafic card had 128Mb... it was alot to me.. but tell that to 3-6GB today.. :2738: