CPAPtalk.com

Ganesha wrote:

dsm wrote:
Add to that list 'Amazing Grace' (Rear Admiral Grace Hopper) - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grace_Hopper
IIRC was still working for the navy well into her 80s - I think she led the team that defined & developed the COBOL language.

People like her are my inspiration - if we can still be working at 80 then I think it fair to say we know our lives will have been well lived.
(mind you, with govts, banks & superannuation funds constantly loosing our money, working to age 80 may be a necessity).

DSM

I love the Grace Hopper reference. She was my hero back when I was a COBOL programmer. A guy in my department even had her picture framed in his cube. Her military background comes out in the COBOL terms 'Sections' and 'Divisions'.

Yes I am old (57). Some of the kids I work with have never seen a mainframe screen.

Mark

I'm old enough to have done programming with RPG and keypunch machines.

When I tell the kids I work with about this their eyes glaze over... then they tell me computers are nothing without the Internet.

They forget about all the "transaction processing" systems still running out there.

I remind these same kids that I generate their pay cheques on the computer... and that application has nothing to do with the Internet. They do get excited when I talk about pay cheques.

40 here, and nice to see there is a lot of computer geeks in here like myself.

thankfully, I am not old enough to know anything about feeding cards into a computer!

shoot, I just turned 60 but was diagnosed at 59 SO can I be in the 50's???

I am only old enough to have programmed in BASIC. I remember those punched cards, though. My grandma got her social security check as a punched card.

How old do I look?

71 and loving it!!
Been on CPAP for 4 years.

31 here. Been on CPAP for one week today actually .

Hi, I'm new here but I've been a lurker for about 2 weeks. I'll be 54 on Friday. I was diagnosed 11/08. It was nice to find more people that I can relate to.

Well, my dad worked at Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab in MD here and I remember there being an Open House for families in I think 1960, and I got to go in and see their HUGE Univac computer, and even play with one of the first targeting systems for pilots- they had it set up as trying to capture a dragon- but it was(I believe) targeting another plane! Does that make me really, REALLY old??? I don't program anything, but have HAD a computer at home since 1985, and we were on the Well in SF back when it started,somewhere around 89,I think it was=it sure is easier now, tho...
And no,I am not the person who put down the "100"for age-I am 58 until December 18!!!
~joan

The graph shows almost a perfect bell curve and indicates the mean age of respondents is "about" 50 years.

Not that i'm worried about being 46, i don't like as the chart gets into the 70's through 90's the numbers get smaller,I'd like to see alot of older people on the cpap living well into those higher years thanks to the cpap machine

Voted in the 50's although mentally I think I'm really only in the 30's!

The first computer I wrote a program for was in 1959 on a UNIVAC 1. The input device was a GE typewriter with a paper tape reader/punch and the "printer" was the typewriter. It had 4 K (yes K) of memory. It was housed in a separate building because it was all tubes and the heat was tremendous. I also wrote programs on paper forms which were keypunched into 80 column cards. Anybody remember the IBM System 3? It has a 96 column card and was smaller than the 80 column. There was also the DEC machines that had wire I/O devices instead of paper. Remember the DEC 10? IBM 360? RCA Spectra 70?

Boy, I'm older that the dirt caught between the cracks in the raised flooring.

rogelah wrote:I wrote a program for was in 1959

Remember the head of IBM who said he had no idea how any more than 5 or 6 companies could find a use for a computer?

My very first job was at Jordan Marsh in Miami, Fla, decollating the 7 copies of reports that were printed in the Tampa facility and sent via plane to Miami and taxied to the office every Wednesday morning -- separating those copies with carbon paper inbetween each was so dirt that I still hate carbon paper! Then, I had to find the item numbers for those that had lost their IDs by comparing the previous wk's inventory to current wk taking into account what was sold preceding wk...all with the dept mgr haning over my shoulder to get their copies and updated inventories...talk about ancient technology. We were in a room next to the computer room that was kept at 65 degrees -- we thought we'd all freeze and numb fingers were standard. Walking out into Miami heat and humidity was actually pleasant .

A little later, I learned COBOL (and COBOL D and F for diak and tape) as well as FORTRAN programming on a Honeywell System (Model?) 58. Working part-time for Honeywell entitled me to take their education courses for free. back then ya hadda write prgms for speed not pretty so ya left in all sorts of junk in rpts that today would be grounds for firing -- gotta remember almost all computing was done as time-sharing for hundreds of dollars per minute and very few companies actually owned a computer. In classes, we celebrated who could write prgms with the least steps...I typically won but as a 19 yr old female in classes with degreed mathematicians, no one would hire me ! The Honeywell instructors were so impressed with my skill in that ancient spahetti-style of programming, for months they tried to place me with one of their customers without any success; we gave up and I went on to other things. We weren't allowed near the keypunch machines and had to learn to carry huge collections of Hollerith cards and Lord help ya if ya dropped 'em 'cause no one wanted us near the sorting machines. I still have a few around as souvenirs, that and the graph paper and plastic templates for the data flow diagrams.

When Honeywell celebrated it's 25th year in the computer business, they embedded a 1K chip in acrylic to give to each employee -- still have that, amazing how far we've come.

rogelah wrote:Boy, I'm older that the dirt caught between the cracks in the raised flooring.

Yeah, I suspect there's a few of us from the ancient days of early computing. EDP departments. When computers were finally affordable for companies, they put 'em on the ground floor behind glass walls to show off their toy. Boy, were they surprised when flooding was forecst and everyone was drafted pre-flood to move the beast and all the peripherals to higher floors .

Ah, bursting and decollating... I remember those days as well. Being a computer operator back then was often a dirty and physically challenging job... and sometimes very hazardous too!

I remember one occasion the lightening followed a cable all the way back into the mainframe... frying every board in the system. The operator was sitting at the console a mere 1 foot away. IBM was onsite for 3 days and every coupla hours we would hear from the hardware techs: "ok, replacing this one more board should get this machine up and running again".

The boss finally said "You said this 4 boards ago... what is the deal? We have an angry mob of 1200 hard rock unionized miners out in the plant that want their pay that is already 2 days late! There is a meeting this afternoon... we want YOU there."