BoarderPhreak
Well-Known Member
Perhaps this speaks to their demise... But what is a Giggle Gang? 
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Yet another cutback?!? MK Entertainment
- Thread starter Thumper 32
- Start date
Try Assembler, good old machine language. Ones and zeros....I think that's when I started drinking. Never ever take Assembler and COBOL at the same time.
ford91exploder
Resident Curmudgeon
When I started computers still had switches on the front panel and halt and single step features, you could patch code in 'core' yes it had those too the ORIGINAL non-volatile memory. I still have a slice of core from a decommissioned PDP 11/70 which was replaced by a shiny new DEC PDP 11/780 VAX running Berkley Unix oh the luxury the computer booted by turning it on.
On the 11/70 to boot the machine you 'toggled' in the boot loader program in binary because most computers did not have a 'boot rom' at the time.
When I started computers still had switches on the front panel and halt and single step features, you could patch code in 'core' yes it had those too the ORIGINAL non-volatile memory. I still have a slice of core from a decommissioned PDP 11/70 which was replaced by a shiny new DEC PDP 11/780 VAX running Berkley Unix oh the luxury the computer booted by turning it on.
On the 11/70 to boot the machine you 'toggled' in the boot loader program in binary because most computers did not have a 'boot rom' at the time.
Ah, the good old days. When your code was on IBM punch cards in a box... and I dropped the box on my way to load the cards. Was so glad when they let students use terminals. Kids these days have no appreciation for what programming use to be....
ford91exploder
Resident Curmudgeon
Did you draw a diagonal line across your card deck?, And did you ever punch a 'Lace Card' to get even with the operators ???
TomP
Well-Known Member
Holy C Rapp... I wrote COBOL and BAL for years. You guys have taken me back to a very dark place! I still have coding sheets I wrote from 1968!!!!
ford91exploder
Resident Curmudgeon
I think I still have a couple of unused pads of coding sheets somewhere
along with a hand card punch...One of the PA's in the life company (I worked for a regional insurer doing the first generation of networked computers running CTOS) wrote this memorable snippet of COBOL
MOVE DEATH-SWITCH TO YOUR-TIME-HAS-COME - never forgot THAT line of code I think about it every Haloween.
"Dude, what's a coding sheet?". Yeah, I've still got the floppy disks for an AI attempt at financial analysis I wrote in BASIC. The print out of the lines of code was almost 8 feet long....
I think I still have a couple of unused pads of coding sheets somewhere
I bet over 50% of the people on this thread have no clue what we are talking about. "There's an app that does it, so what's coding?". We are dinosaurs.
I think I still have a couple of unused pads of coding sheets somewhere
One of the PA's in the life company (I worked for a regional insurer doing the first generation of networked computers running CTOS) wrote this memorable snippet of COBOL
MOVE DEATH-SWITCH TO YOUR-TIME-HAS-COME - never forgot THAT line of code I think about it every Haloween.
Now THAT is a great line of code....
ford91exploder
Resident Curmudgeon
I bet over 50% of the people on this thread have no clue what we are talking about. "There's an app that does it, so what's coding?". We are dinosaurs.
Perhaps but I've chosen to evolve into a bird. We have chickens when they are young they look remarkably like Velociraptors
ford91exploder
Resident Curmudgeon
It is indeed, One of the great things about old school COBOL is if you used reasonable variable names the code indeed was self documenting.
Did you ever see the Letterman with Adm. Grace Hopper? - She totally OWNED him he was speechless after she got through with him.
For Those who don't know
Adm. Grace Hopper created the specification for the COBOL language, I think because she hated the way JOVIAL (Junior Officers Version of the Incomprehensible Algorithmic Language) worked.
TomP
Well-Known Member
OT, I guess for this thread, but funny story: I wrote a HUGE program in 1970 for an insurance company. In 1992, I ran into a guy that worked for the same company...they were still using my program (with lots of mods I'm sure). It still had my name on it as its author and the same program name.
I learned to never write a program with several bubble loops after a night at the local student bar. That's when I realized how important an appropriately placed END LOOP was....
Yeah, we've gotten off topic for this thread. But if it weren't for us old coders, where would these fancy sites be?
ford91exploder
Resident Curmudgeon
We all learned that lesson pretty much the same way.
Yes, thank you ma'am for the hell COBOL could be..... I remember the first time I took a simple BASIC program I wrote and converted it to COBOL.
