Re: C++ vs. C#

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I had been a programmer for nine years before a saw a "little square cursor".

I used to be skilled in holding a deck of cards in one hand and punching a replacement
card with the other hand while leaning over the keypunch operator. Having a wide
hand-span was a distinct advantage because the shift keys were only on the left but the
keys to be struck were on the right.


And by "shift", I don't mean "upper case". The character set of the 026 card punch was

0123456789ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQR/STUVWXYZ $ * , . - space [42 characters]

You could have the "scientific set" which had the characters ( ) & # ' [5 characters]
or the "commercial set" which had % ¤ + = @ in those same character code positions

The computer could print, but the keypunch could not punch with one keystroke
? (12,0)
! (11, 0)

In addition, the computer had the possibility of the characters but none of these appeared
on the typical printer chain or bar (it reduced the printing speed too much). These could
not be punched into cards by striking a key; instead, you held down the "multi-punch" key,
and then typed +-0123456789 keys (or &-0123456789) to punch the holes in the same column
of the card. The +& were the "12-punch" and the - was the "11-punch".

record mark (0,2,8) (an equal sign with a vertical bar through it)
group mark (12,7,8) (like a record mark, but 3 horizontal bars)
word mark (0,5,8) (like a little flying bird cartoon)
tape mark (7,8) (looked like a square root sign)
substitute blank (2,8) (represented as a b with a slash)
segment mark (0,7,8) ( two vertical lines with a single horizontal line)
delta (11,7,8) (an equilateral triangle)

< > [ ] : ; \

When creating binary patches for the 1401/40/60 computers, the word mark was critical to
punch into the card. Some of these other codes were critical as well (for example ? was
the opcode for "Zero and Add" and ! was the opcode for "Zero and Subtract", record marks
and group marks were essential data values.

On 1967, I got to use a "remote job entry" system that allowed us to type programs in on a
Model 35 Teletype. The programs were stored with line numbers in columns 72..80, and to
edit, we would write programs to edit our source, such as

$EDIT 3/P
$DELETE 110
$INSERT 180
text
text
text
$END
$REPLACE 240
text
$DONE

Of course, once you got too many insertions, you had to renumber, which means you couldn't
edit again until you got a listing, which could take 4-6 hours. The files were named by
their "file number" under your user ID, and each file had a version number that was
incremented on each edit. So I would have file 3/1, edit it and get file 3/2, and so on.
If I asked to edit a file and got the version # wrong, it would refuse to edit, so 4-6
hours later, I would find that my edit job had failed. So we all used /P which meant
"edit whatever the version is". I had a file numbered 1 which decoded all the file
numbers against file "names".

Teletypes printed 10 characters/second, so output was very slow. This is why we usually
waited for the printer listing; it took too long to get a listing on the terminal. Or we
could work with punched cards, but that reduced turnaround even more but editing was
faster.

At least I didn't have to physically cut and re-tape punched paper tape!
joe

On Thu, 16 Apr 2009 06:58:23 -0700, "Tom Serface" <tom@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

In some ways it was much harder back in the day, but the requirements for
the programs are so much more arduous these days. For example, we used to
get away with a program that had a little square cursor and required you to
know the command to type in to get it to do something. Now, we need
computers (and IDEs) that almost write the program for you and do your job
and buy you coffee when they are done. :o)

Tom

"Giovanni Dicanio" <giovanniDOTdicanio@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:eBzuT0mvJHA.1536@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Thanks for the interesting (as usual) historical perspective, Joe.

When I compare the status of today with that of "back in the days" that
you describe, it seems clear to me that being a computer
scientist/programmer in those "back in the days" times was *much harder*
than it is today.

Debugging with lights... (!), using several iterations to write a usable
compiler (from "raw" assembler, used to build an assembler with macros,
used to build a simplified language compiler, used to build compiler for
the language that has some more features, etc. and finally have a decent
compiler...)... wow.

Giovanni

Joseph M. Newcomer [MVP]
email: newcomer@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Web: http://www.flounder.com
MVP Tips: http://www.flounder.com/mvp_tips.htm
.

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