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   GreenSkyOverMe (Monika) (greenskyoverme@ohai.social)'s status on Friday, 01-Dec-2023 17:49:09 JST GreenSkyOverMe (Monika)

   How old are you?
   Me:

   • Embed this notice
     GreenSkyOverMe (Monika) (greenskyoverme@ohai.social)'s status on Friday, 01-Dec-2023 18:11:30 JST GreenSkyOverMe (Monika)

     in reply to

     • Andrew C.A. Elliott

     @ACAElliott Punchcards or bust?

   • Embed this notice
     Andrew C.A. Elliott (acaelliott@mstdn.social)'s status on Friday, 01-Dec-2023 18:11:31 JST Andrew C.A. Elliott

     in reply to

     @GreenSkyOverMe

     Youngsters!

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     Blippy the Wonder Slug 🇩🇪🇨🇦🇺🇸 (blippythewonderslug@social.cologne)'s status on Friday, 01-Dec-2023 18:53:12 JST Blippy the Wonder Slug 🇩🇪🇨🇦🇺🇸

     in reply to

     • Andrew C.A. Elliott

     @GreenSkyOverMe @ACAElliott
     🤣 I actually had to learn and code punchcard assembler (IBM 360 series, running OS/360!!) when I went to "computer school."

     Paper tape, too.

     I've never used it since, nor do I remember anything other than the tedium, and the litter. Much cardboard, and much confetti.

     GreenSkyOverMe (Monika) repeated this.
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     afreytes, 👻 of 🎄⌛ (afreytes@mastodon.gamedev.place)'s status on Friday, 01-Dec-2023 18:53:19 JST afreytes, 👻 of 🎄⌛

     in reply to

     @GreenSkyOverMe I don't remember which one of those, but one of these ports would very consistently zap you, if you happened to touch the ungrounded cable hooked up to it. Because back then cables were sold sans shielding, grounding, or isolation. Fun times!

   • Embed this notice
     GreenSkyOverMe (Monika) (greenskyoverme@ohai.social)'s status on Friday, 01-Dec-2023 18:53:32 JST GreenSkyOverMe (Monika)

     in reply to

     • afreytes, 👻 of 🎄⌛

     @afreytes OMG!

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     Andrew C.A. Elliott (acaelliott@mstdn.social)'s status on Friday, 01-Dec-2023 18:53:41 JST Andrew C.A. Elliott

     in reply to

     @GreenSkyOverMe

     Tail end of punchcards, yep. Don't drop that deck!

   • Embed this notice
     Tim Ward ⭐🇪🇺🔶 #FBPE (timwardcam@c.im)'s status on Friday, 01-Dec-2023 18:55:45 JST Tim Ward ⭐🇪🇺🔶 #FBPE

     in reply to

     • Blippy the Wonder Slug 🇩🇪🇨🇦🇺🇸
     • Andrew C.A. Elliott

     @BlippyTheWonderSlug @GreenSkyOverMe @ACAElliott The best bit is when the box of punched cards falls off the back of your bicycle and distributes themselves along a mud-filled gutter.

     Boxes of punched cards were were storage was at for students, you didn't get any useful quantities of actual disk space.

     GreenSkyOverMe (Monika) repeated this.
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     Andrew C.A. Elliott (acaelliott@mstdn.social)'s status on Friday, 01-Dec-2023 18:58:23 JST Andrew C.A. Elliott

     in reply to

     • Blippy the Wonder Slug 🇩🇪🇨🇦🇺🇸
     • Tim Ward ⭐🇪🇺🔶 #FBPE

     @TimWardCam @BlippyTheWonderSlug @GreenSkyOverMe

     Yep. I coded in FORTRAN and the dropped deck happened more than once.

     A friend coded in BASIC where the compiler/interpreter(?) would first sort the input by line number, so his code could survive a deck shuffle!

     GreenSkyOverMe (Monika) repeated this.
   • Embed this notice
     GreenSkyOverMe (Monika) (greenskyoverme@ohai.social)'s status on Friday, 01-Dec-2023 18:58:58 JST GreenSkyOverMe (Monika)

     in reply to

     • Blippy the Wonder Slug 🇩🇪🇨🇦🇺🇸
     • Andrew C.A. Elliott
     • Tim Ward ⭐🇪🇺🔶 #FBPE

     @ACAElliott @TimWardCam @BlippyTheWonderSlug Oh, that’s what the line numbers were for! (Besides GOTO)

   • Embed this notice
     Tim Ward ⭐🇪🇺🔶 #FBPE (timwardcam@c.im)'s status on Friday, 01-Dec-2023 18:59:12 JST Tim Ward ⭐🇪🇺🔶 #FBPE

     in reply to

     • Blippy the Wonder Slug 🇩🇪🇨🇦🇺🇸
     • Andrew C.A. Elliott

     @ACAElliott @BlippyTheWonderSlug @GreenSkyOverMe Nothing so sophisticated for me. And I couldn't be arsed to punch line numbers in columns 73-80 of the FORTRAN cards anyway.

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     kaybeeque (kaybee335@fosstodon.org)'s status on Saturday, 02-Dec-2023 00:37:36 JST kaybeeque

     in reply to

     • Blippy the Wonder Slug 🇩🇪🇨🇦🇺🇸
     • Andrew C.A. Elliott
     • Tim Ward ⭐🇪🇺🔶 #FBPE

     @TimWardCam @BlippyTheWonderSlug @GreenSkyOverMe @ACAElliott you know you're hooked when...

     I got hooked up in high school with a group that took advantage of a local university service to run free batch jobs in idle time from 8pm-6am. Drop your deck off and sometime in the next hour get a printout with your latest compile error! And repeat. 😃

     There wasn't much to do while waiting so the 'computer geeks' from all over the city would just sit around and talk. A late 70's version of a LAN party

     GreenSkyOverMe (Monika) repeated this.
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     Tim Ward ⭐🇪🇺🔶 #FBPE (timwardcam@c.im)'s status on Saturday, 02-Dec-2023 00:37:36 JST Tim Ward ⭐🇪🇺🔶 #FBPE

     in reply to

     • kaybeeque
     • Blippy the Wonder Slug 🇩🇪🇨🇦🇺🇸
     • Andrew C.A. Elliott

     @kaybee335 @BlippyTheWonderSlug @GreenSkyOverMe @ACAElliott We did our assessed exercises overnight on Friday, when no grown-ups were using the mainframe and it gave a decent turnaround.

     Then we'd take it in turns to host the group to breakfast in our various colleges on Saturday morning before going to bed.

     Except that as I went to Churchill I never had to pay for the breakfasts - although I did offer, nobody was ever interested in trekking that far out of town.

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     Tim Ward ⭐🇪🇺🔶 #FBPE (timwardcam@c.im)'s status on Saturday, 02-Dec-2023 00:37:37 JST Tim Ward ⭐🇪🇺🔶 #FBPE

     in reply to

     • kaybeeque
     • Blippy the Wonder Slug 🇩🇪🇨🇦🇺🇸
     • Andrew C.A. Elliott

     @kaybee335 @BlippyTheWonderSlug @GreenSkyOverMe @ACAElliott I've still got some. One of my assessed exercises.

     This was Conway's Life. It was required to be on an unlimited size board, so was supposed to be an exercise in coming up with a data structure for a two dimensional sparse array, and beyond that we could do what we liked.

     I thought it would be fun to design an input/control language and some reasonably clever ways to print the output (this was done as a batch job on a mainframe). The guy who marked it thought I'd gone way beyond what was expected!

     GreenSkyOverMe (Monika) repeated this.
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     kaybeeque (kaybee335@fosstodon.org)'s status on Saturday, 02-Dec-2023 00:37:38 JST kaybeeque

     in reply to

     • Blippy the Wonder Slug 🇩🇪🇨🇦🇺🇸
     • Andrew C.A. Elliott
     • Tim Ward ⭐🇪🇺🔶 #FBPE

     @TimWardCam @BlippyTheWonderSlug @GreenSkyOverMe @ACAElliott
     Fanfold paper. So much fanfold paper!
     😂

     GreenSkyOverMe (Monika) repeated this.
   • Embed this notice
     kaybeeque (kaybee335@fosstodon.org)'s status on Saturday, 02-Dec-2023 00:37:39 JST kaybeeque

     in reply to

     • Blippy the Wonder Slug 🇩🇪🇨🇦🇺🇸
     • Andrew C.A. Elliott
     • Tim Ward ⭐🇪🇺🔶 #FBPE

     @TimWardCam @BlippyTheWonderSlug @GreenSkyOverMe @ACAElliott a 'release' meant an elastic band around the deck.

     A diagonal line across the spine of the deck marked with thick magic marker allowed for crude initial visual sorting of cards when the inevitable disaster occurred.

     Fun times! 😃