A True Story for the IT Types

[joe greiner]

Waaaay back when, in graduate school at Uni, we used punch cards for programs and data (terminals came along a little later). Keypunch machines were in groups of four or five, in rooms scattered around campus. It was always difficult to find an idle machine. Soooo: Keypunch machines had programming capability; useful for skipping to particular fields for data entry as most programs didn't use free format. The programs were punched on an ordinary punch card, which was then mounted on a program drum in the machine. Program or non-program was chosen by a switch. We prepared a program to skip the entire card, and mounted it on the drum. Then put "out of order" sign on the machine. When a victim tried to use the machine, it spit cards all over the place. When we wanted to use it, we removed the "out of order" sign, switched to non-program, and worked merrily away; restored to program and sign when finished. We had to repeat this exercise often, because a few spoilsports were wise to the game.

Joe

[silentC]

Ah yes the old programmer's tales of punch cards. You know they still use the card terminology in IBM 3270 programming - most people working on it now would never have seen a punch card (including me).

One of the blokes I used to work with reckoned if you didn't like someone, you took one of their cards out and inserted it somewhere else in the deck. Then when they tried to run it, they'd be scratching their heads trying to work out what was wrong.

[bitingmidge]

We had a computing subject at uni.

Took a month to punch these stupid friggin' cards to tell a machine to draw a simple PERT schedule that I could have done by hand in about thirty-five seconds.

I never could bring myself to understand the process, nor how to arrive at the outcome. Just blindly punch holes in the card, get it to work, then make a note to self : "computers are useless, never get involved in anything to do with them ever again."

And so it was for a couple of decades, and probably why, when intelligent typewriters came in to being, I bought a Mac, not a computer.

Cheers,

P

[rrich]

Ah yes, punch cards, Called many things but the correct name is Hollerith Code Card.

Punch cards make wonderful note pads. (I have about 500 left and are used for that purpose today.)

A punch card is 0.0075 inch thick or .19mm thick. (You can bet on it!)

When my kids were little, they kept about 1000 punch cards in their room. On rainy days they would build card houses using these punch cards. It would keep them quiet and busy for hours.

[silentC]

One of the guys I worked with had worked for the RTA (Roads and Traffic Authority) in the early days of mainframe computers. They eventually got rid of the punch cards and replaced them with 3270 terminals (terminal screens and keyboards for the mainframe-challenged). Trouble was they only had one and you had to be a data entry operator to use it. So the programmers had to write out all their code on code sheets, which would be given to the data entry girl and she would type them all in. They then had to wait until overnight when the one and only CPU could be freed up for testing to see if the programme would work. Fix any bugs the next day, get it typed up again, and go through the whole process again until it was right.

I guess they got pretty good at 'desk checking'.

[AlexS]

Back when I was a youngg bloke, I used to have to write programs on punch cards using a Holerith punch...not one of yer fancy IBM electrical card punches. This one had a key for each row on the card, and non-numeric characters were made up of combinations, so I soon became pretty dextrous with my fingers .

The worst problem was that the characters weren't printad on the card, so you always tried to get it right the first time...and never did.

[K_S]

I think it's a bit rich for IT types to ascribe to stupidity the misinterpretation of their jargon by non-IT types. You've spent years of effort building up a mystique about what is really just cerebral rock-busting, then complain when a normal person calls your bluff. You can't have it both ways, fellers.

(Insert tongue-in-cheek icon here)

I'm with you.
If someone invents something that isn't logical to the common man then it's up to them to carry that burden.
Then there are those who just love to stir geeks

[AlexS]

Then there are those who just love to stir geeks

....

[echnidna]

....one lump or two