Punch cards

[John Thompson]

On 2008-04-04, Robert Rabinoff <rar113 at columbia.edu> wrote:

> When I first learned to program in 1964 we used an IBM 1620, fondly known
> as CADET (Can't Add, Doesn't Even Try). 

Heh. My one-and-only formal computer class was learning FORTRAN, which 
we ran on an IBM 1620. The computer had more important things to do than 
run student programs, so we would write them out in spiral bound 
notebooks in class and as homework, then come to the computer center 
after hours when the keypunches weren't being used for more important 
work, punch the cards and put them in the job queue to be run over night 
(we weren't allowed to touch the sacred computer). The next day we'd 
come back for the job printout (on wide greenbar paper, of course), 
peruse the errors in our programs, punch new cards, drop them in the 
queue and repeat until it worked. 

-- 

John (john at os2.dhs.org)