Re: Programming?

["Ralph M. Deal" <deal@xxxxxxxx>]

Great to hear from not-so-young members who've had early painful learning
experiences.  I'm adding one for your amusement.

On Mon, 6 Dec 1999, Rick Hayner wrote:

. . .
> Of course, you're reading a message from a guy that started on an
> ibm-360 in it's assembly language.  It really scared heck out of me,
> but I guarantee you i learned programming logic real fast.  I don't
> think that C is as dangerous as assembly language to start with as a
> first language, but I'll always thank God I did start in assembly
> language, because it forced me to learn programming logic real well.
> Because of the teacher I had, it is now possible for me to borrow a
> book on tape on a programming language, and understand the concepts of
> it, and teach myself the language.
. . .

My first and only course in CS was on Illiac I at U.Ill, Urbana, in its
last semester of existence.  Built for the DOD, it was housed in a very
large airconditioned room, required by the vacuum tubes used exclusively
therein.  The memory was Williamson tubes, storing data as charges on
segments of a CRT (had to be refreshed frequently of course), and the
input/output was exclusively paper tape.  The only language was assembly.
Breakdowns were common of course.
Ah FORTRAN was a miracle tool in those olden days.

Can anyone beat that for antique computer experiences?

	Nostalgically,   Ralph  deal@kzoo.edu