User since: Feb 24, 2005 at 07:13 UTC (20 years ago) Last here: Oct 29, 2009 at 07:40 UTC (15 years ago) Experience: 1472 Level: Hermit (10) Writeups: 262 Location: Poverty Flat, Rancho Buena Ventura, California, USA User's localtime: Jan 23, 2025 at 02:21 PST Scratchpad: None. For this user: Search nodes

Authority indeed proceeds from true reason, reason never proceeds from authority. - John Scot Eriugena

bio

First program I ever wrote was on a Monroe programable calculator. Your were l33t if you could shorten your program using undocumented instructions or by accessing the unsupported characters on the print drum.

From there I graduated to 80 column punch cards and Fortran on an IBM 1130. The big iron was across town and you had to wait a day or two for your listing back. Code review was the name of the game the edit/debug cycle was just too long.

One Fortran student was a Cargo Cult devotee. He would literally borrow your code, taking your old punch cards and inserting them into his deck.

My first personal computer was Elf 1802. It had 256 bytes of memory, a hex keypad, and a little LED you could turn on and off. A steal at $99.95. I hacked my own address readout for debugging.

Paid my way into college writing payroll programs in Basic on an Imsai 8080. We had the 'ultimate': 64k ram and dual 8 in floppies. It sounded like a washing machine when it was compiling. ( Yes, compiled Basic ) but that was music compared to the noise from the ball impact printer. We turned our noses up at the whimpy little machines from an upstart garage company named after a fruit.

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