13 Dec
2015
13 Dec
'15
1:20 a.m.
On 2015-Dec-12, at 4:15 PM, Eric Christopherson wrote:
On Sat, Dec 12, 2015, Robert Rissell wrote:
I entered university on the tail end of the batch era, and for student coursework that was
the way it worked: job control cards, source, data.
Compile, list, execute, program-output all in one submission.
(This was under MTS, which despite being a timesharing system (Michigan Terminal System),
still had support for batch.)
The good thing about batch is there was always the incentive to get your entire program
right the first time.
The batch job consisted of a Batch Number for
accounting, the keyword-coded
header card(s) to tell the computer what to do with the following cards
such as Compile, Link, Execute then Output for a Fortran source.
[snip]
Following the source you would find the cards
listing the input for the program, such as a list of accounts and amounts
to be added
together or sorted.
So you could have the same batch job compile AND run the program? That
kind of surprises me. Must have saved a lot of time that way.