CPAPtalk.com

SleepyBobR wrote:No, I can't remember which ones were which. But I do remember waiting for two days for the first compilation of a program only to get back a JCL error. And the frantic overnight sessions testing code to meet a deadline because there was no machine time available during the day. Great fun - I'd do it all over again. Most of the people in the business back then weren't trained computer professionals because there was no training available. We just fell into it somehow and those with the aptitude figured it out somehow. Made for quite an eclectic assortment of personalities.

SleepyBobR

Absolutely - there was little training available as you say. When I went to IBM (mid 1960s) they would hire you for the engineering side if you had military radio/electronics background or from the post office if you had comms training (line / switch techs). For analyst & programming work, teachers were their 1st pick and then people with industry knowledge or experience (i.e. accounting, Insurance, or distribution etc;).

A group of some 100s of us from IBM in the 1970s are holding a reunion here in 1 months time - at the main zoo on Sydney harbor. Haven't seen some of these folks the 1970s

It was an unusual time & an unusual industry back then.

DSM

Arizona-Willie wrote:I clicked on the link for a newer version of Firefox being available and it worked fine.
I'm running Firefox 3.6 on Windows 7 64 bit with no problems.

I updated the same way and it worked fine for me. I'm running Firefox 3.6 on Win XP with no problems.

When I was a kid, my mom was a COBOL programmer and our scratch paper was used punch cards. Whenever she wrote a shopping list for me to go the the grocery store, it was on the back of a punch card. We got used to avoiding writing over the holes.

She retired long ago, but came out of retirement during the late 1990s to work on the Y2K problem. One of my uncles is also a COBOL programmer who came out of retirement to work on the Y2K problem. There must have been lots of white hair COBOL programmers working on the Y2K problem. The ironic thing is that she will not have a PC (of any flavor) in the house. I have offered to give her PCs and set them up for her (both Linux and Windows), and she doesn't want one.

bearded_two wrote:When I was a kid, my mom was a COBOL programmer and our scratch paper was used punch cards. Whenever she wrote a shopping list for me to go the the grocery store, it was on the back of a punch card. We got used to avoiding writing over the holes.

She retired long ago, but came out of retirement during the late 1990s to work on the Y2K problem. One of my uncles is also a COBOL programmer who came out of retirement to work on the Y2K problem. There must have been lots of white hair COBOL programmers working on the Y2K problem. The ironic thing is that she will not have a PC (of any flavor) in the house. I have offered to give her PCs and set them up for her (both Linux and Windows), and she doesn't want one.

Bearded_two

Funny how COBOL is still with us. Many financial systems were written in it & remain so.
I have MicroFocus Cobol & still do some programming it it for a project where I had
COBOL ISAM as a backend database being accessed by Smalltalk code which could generate
web pages to display the ISAM data in tables

Bit like having a scientific computer to navigate Noah's Ark

But those old punched cards - did you ever see anyone use the 'chads' as confetti - absolutely
horrible stuff - we often had different colored cards & thus the chads could be cardboard red,
cardboard blue, cardboard brown, cardboard yellow or the regular buff color.

Then there was using paper tape for streamers

DSM

No problems running Firefox 3.6 on any of the 5 machines I keep running with Win 7 32 bit. That said, all thing need to be kept clean, a full cookie jar isn't good it draws Ants, I dump my cookies about 4 times daily, but again I'm a extreem surfer. Jim

When I was a kid, my mom was a COBOL programmer and our scratch paper was used punch cards. Whenever she wrote a shopping list for me to go the the grocery store, it was on the back of a punch card. We got used to avoiding writing over the holes.

She retired long ago, but came out of retirement during the late 1990s to work on the Y2K problem. One of my uncles is also a COBOL programmer who came out of retirement to work on the Y2K problem. There must have been lots of white hair COBOL programmers working on the Y2K problem.

Ugh! Talk about making me feel OLD, no ANCIENT!

Still punched cards beat punched paper tape hands down.

Ah, well. Instead of the punched cards, my family uses the paper that the "office of the future" was going to eliminate. I think I print FAR more than ever before. Sometimes it's just easier to read the paper than it is to read the same information off a screen.

dsm wrote:

SleepyBobR wrote:No, I can't remember which ones were which. But I do remember waiting for two days for the first compilation of a program only to get back a JCL error. And the frantic overnight sessions testing code to meet a deadline because there was no machine time available during the day. Great fun - I'd do it all over again. Most of the people in the business back then weren't trained computer professionals because there was no training available. We just fell into it somehow and those with the aptitude figured it out somehow. Made for quite an eclectic assortment of personalities.

SleepyBobR

Absolutely - there was little training available as you say. When I went to IBM (mid 1960s) they would hire you for the engineering side if you had military radio/electronics background or from the post office if you had comms training (line / switch techs). For analyst & programming work, teachers were their 1st pick and then people with industry knowledge or experience (i.e. accounting, Insurance, or distribution etc;).

A group of some 100s of us from IBM in the 1970s are holding a reunion here in 1 months time - at the main zoo on Sydney harbor. Haven't seen some of these folks the 1970s

It was an unusual time & an unusual industry back then.

DSM

Unusual indeed. Sounds like we had similar experiences. I joined IBM in '68 as a programmer. I'd never seen a computer and knew nothing about them. I was a mechanical engineer. Back then, we learned about machines and stresses and gears. Not all computer science like they do now. The project leader on the first job I worked on had been a plumber in the UK. He was a hot shot programmer. A plumber.
Go figure.

I just finished configuring two new computers (for myself) last week (XP) and installed fresh downloads of Firefox 3.6 on both.....no problems.

I also "cut my teeth" in mainframe computing in the punched paper tape and punch card days (Burroughs, Honeywell and IBM). Did a little COBOL programming (among others), too, over the years.


Den

Den/SleepyBobR

Computing used to be such an unusual profession. Largely because in the very early days they weren't taught at university (I think computing science started to show up in the mid 1970s). It was like we stumbled into the profession. I hadn't seen a computer before I joined IBM & really had no idea what they did. That took me a couple of years to begin to grasp. I learned to program in assembler just to try to get a feel for what was going on.

We used to wear suits & white shirts but that mellowed in the 1970s.

The classic image of a 'computer man' in the 1960s & 1970s was of a male with black rimmed glasses in a white lab coat. Didn't matter what job you did, (operator, engineer, analyst, programmer) that was the image.

Funny times

DSM

I saw most of it from the operations end......banking.....oil company.....back to banking (installing systems and consulting).
The operations/operators were in a less formal atmosphere where I worked. We didn't have to look "nerdy".....

We were the ones who had to load all those test programs with trays full of punched cards.......only to find out the programmer had one out of sequence.


Den

I once had a VIC-20.....

Happy to say that after using the dreaded MSIE to download an updated Firefox 3.6 - it now works ok.

Thanks for those tips

DSM

I keep an original eniac in my basement. I use it to heat the house.

DreamDiver wrote:I keep an original eniac in my basement. I use it to heat the house.

Nord