19 Feb
2015
19 Feb
'15
7:14 p.m.
On 02/19/2015 06:46 PM, Lyndon Nerenberg wrote:
But I am so much smarter than the rest. I have an
account on the
university Amdahl/470, with both Fortran G *and* H! So I will just
write and debug my code there, then punch a deck and submit it in the
mail. Am I cool or what?!?
CDC management so detested programmers punching their own cards that
they made it really inconvenient. There was a keypunch located at each
corner of the building,*on a timer*--one of those clickety-click ones
with a knob. I recall that you could get about 10 minutes per twist.
I mean, why waste your time keypunching, when you could submit it to the
gals in keypunch to mis-type your stuff? Of course, real terminals were
kept from the programmers as well. When we finally managed to talk
management into installing real video terminals, they took about 15 of
them and put them all on tables in *one* room. Heaven forfend that
anyone should have one on their desk!
It didn't really matter much to me--being in systems software, I used
lots of committed block time usually during the wee hours of the night
where there were keypunch machines available all over an essentially
empty building. If I needed a patch card while I was on the machine, I
could always run the o26 PPU program on the DD60 operator's console.
The way to be productive back then was to be invisible.
--Chuck