30 Dec
2005
30 Dec
'05
2:32 p.m.
On 12/30/2005 at 2:29 PM Kevin Handy wrote:
If you used the forms enough, you could eventually
print 10 point
using blank paper.
One survival skill in programming was learning to block print legibly and
quickly. Lines through zeroes and maybe a tick in the middle of a seven,
serifs on capital I to distinguish it from numeric 1...
To this day, I can still block print much faster than I can write script.
And my script is illegible.
Another skill was developing a good working relationship with the ladies
(not sexist, just the way I remember it) in keypunch. Little gifts on
birthdays and for Christmas, interest (feigned or not) in children, spouses
and pets, etc. all went a long way toward making sure that your code was
punched accurately and promptly. Get on the wrong side of these people
and your life could become hell.
Developing a good working relationship with the customer engineers (also
called field engineers) would also get you a long way if you were in OS
development. When a PPU on a CDC Cyber would hang, you could always bribe
one into dragging his scope over to the system and reading the P counter
for you (rebooting did not preserve it). If you kept a good relationshp,
a CE was less likely to resent your existence the next time the printer
pixies decided to grab a ribbon and tangle it up in the print train...
Cheers,
Chuck