From: user7@newsgrouper.org.invalid
n0_m0d3m posted:
> >
> That's where you might be wrong; it's the understanding of how it
> "works" that's fading; debugging punched cards required a tactile
> understanding of code that is hard to replicate in 2025.
I don't know about "tactile understanding" but it certainly required
more patience. I wrote my first programs at school, but no school had
their own computer then. We had to write the program out by hand on
a paper form that matched the layout of 80-column punched cards; these
forms were then sent to the local college where a secretary would type
them into the card-punch machine; a computer operator would feed the
cards into the college computer and collect the printout produced by
compiling and running the code; the printout would then be sent back
to the school and returned to us about a week after we wrote the code.
You might then discover that your code failed to compile because you
missed out a semi-colon, and fixing the mistake and trying again would
take another week. Later I got access to the local university computer,
where you could punch the cards yourself and hand them in to the
operators, so *if* everything was working you might be able to get two
runs in a day, a great improvement! Working in that sort of environment
did make you *very* careful about details of syntax etc.
Having written that down now I'm very much reminded of this:
"Tell that to the young people today and they won't believe you" -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKHFZBUTA4k
--
Colin Macleod ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ https://cmacleod.me.uk
FEED FEED FEED FEED FEED FEED FEED FEED
GAZA GAZA GAZA GAZA GAZA GAZA GAZA GAZA
NOW! NOW! NOW! NOW! NOW! NOW! NOW! NOW!
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)
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