Yea, but who remembers WordStar, & VisiCalc?

[renstyle]

What's ethyl? LOL

That lovely anti-knock substance: Tetraethyl lead.

Not nearly as cool as Ethel Mertz tho, even in her 40s Vivian Vance was quite the looker!

 

[renstyle]

fwiw, back in the stone age of IBM mainframe implementation I had to write system diagnostics in machine language - a lower level than assembly which is essentially a symbolic construct. I carried around a suitcase full of card decks to test things like ALUs, instruction decoders, memory, storage protection arrays, etc.

Looking back at some of the stuff we literally depended on working seems borderline insane to me now. Woof!

Cheers!

Wild eh? Back when computers were actually repairable, and required ALOT more mechanical expertise than nowadays.

Your COBOL code better be lined up in the correct columns before you run that job!

These were the days when a pocket calculator got folks to the moon (computation-wise), and bugs actually had wings

 

[Broothru]

These were the days when a pocket calculator got folks to the moon (computation-wise), and bugs actually had wings

View attachment 770066

Don't forget engineers with slide rules in their short sleeve shirt pockets, with thick glasses and skinny ties.

 

[balrog]

No glasses, but damn I did have to use a slide rule.

Hated that thing.

 

[Broothru]

I remember in high school having to do a unit on slide rules before we even started trig. Not sure exactly why. Calc in college used them, but we were allowed to use the very rudimentary digital calculators (circa 1968) if we were fortunate enough to have access to one. Moot point since no one did actually have access.

I never understood the reason, other than esoteric, for using one until I started flying and was introduced to the ubiquitous E-6B circular slide rule for solving time, distance and wind vector problems, among other computations. Then the logic fell into place, as well as the necessity for accuracy.

Young whippersnappers today don't know what they're missing. Lucky them!

 

[balrog]

Young whippersnappers today don't know what they're missing. Lucky them!

Tru dat.

 

[BrewnWKopperKat]

DR. BOB TECHNICAL'S WHEELS OF BEER (link)

Apparently, nomographs (seen in How to Brew) are were another approach for frequently needed calculations.

 

[Broothru]

DR. BOB TECHNICAL'S WHEELS OF BEER (link)

View attachment 770106

Apparently, nomographs (seen in How to Brew) are were another approach for frequently needed calculations.

O.K. I want that!

 

[marc1]

I typed up quite a few school reports in Bank Street Writer on my Commodore. I don't think I ever used word perfect. I remember being really impressed with MS Word when we finally got that with the WYSIWYG formatting.

 

[betarhoalphadelta]

My computer history doesn't go back QUITE as far as y'all, but I feel fortunate to have seen as much of it as I have.

Started with the Commodore 64 when I was 5. Outside of myself and my best friend writing silly "hello world" programs in BASIC, it was mostly used for playing games. At 7, my parents got an IBM XT. I learned a lot about computers and between that and their next computer (about 6 years later). I recall WordPerfect, and them paying me to input their receipts to calculate their sales tax paid in prep for them to do their taxes. I also became very familiar with DOS.

As we approached the "modern" era, by which I mean 486, they bought a computer when I was about 13 and at that point I became the IT administrator for the house. I wrote a batch file menuing system so my dad could figure out how to get to programs he wanted to use, eventually pissed him off because about every time he got familiar with an OS I'd change it... DOS w/ Windows 3.1 to OS/2 2.1 to Win95 to OS/2 Warp, was the progression IIRC? At that point I also got into the BBS world and ran my own BBS--probably not the only 15 year old in the world to have his own BBS at the time lol.

In high school I took a programming class. The first day I realized it was a joke. It was pretty much "here's a 'for loop', now practice this for the next three weeks and we'll move on'. So from day 1 I started my final project, which was essentially writing any program that needed to include the various lessons from the class. So I essentially wrote the old tank battle game "Scorched Earth" for the Apple 2gs.

Went to Purdue for electrical engineering, and my programming skills were brought into the modern era with C, as well as teaching me assembly. I have used assembly a grand total of once professionally, and hope I never need to again lol.

Now I work for the company that invented the hard drive in 1956, which was 5MB and about the size of a washing machine, and just announced our new 22TB and 26TB 3.5" HDDs 3 weeks ago in 3.5" form factor...

It's been a fun road...

 

[passedpawn]

Now I work for the company that invented the hard drive in 1956, which was 5MB and about the size of a washing machine, and just announced our new 22TB and 26TB 3.5" HDDs 3 weeks ago in 3.5" form factor...

It's been a fun road...

My first pc didn't even have a hard drive, haha. PC Jr. Two floppies. OS (DOS 3.x) booted from a floppy.

Second PC had a 65MB drive, which was a $$ adder to the 40MB drive that was going into most desktops at the time.

My current PC has 4 x 16TB hard drives pooled to look like a single 44TB drive. Yep, we've come a long way baby!

 

[estricklin]

I do some data analytics and automation where I work sometimes, and spreadsheets these days can be the devil. People spend loads of time writing VBA and putting in crazy formulas, that end up being difficult to maintain. I love to kill spreadsheets whenever I can.

I started out with a Tandy 2000 and DOS. I remember trying to learn how to program when I was about 12, I found a book on COBOL and DBASE at the library. I got so frustrated, I took the book back and thought programming just wasn't for me. Now I get paid to do it, and I can't imagine doing anything else.

I can write quite a number of languages now, but I haven't played with Assembly much, it's on my list though. I love being close to the hardware.

 

[passedpawn]

I haven't played with Assembly much, it's on my list though. I love being close to the hardware.

It doesn't get any closer than assembly. I'm mostly a hardware design guy that writes a lot of embedded firmware for various processors (mostly Arm variants). I never write in assembly though haha.

 

[GilSwillBasementBrews]

My computer history doesn't go back QUITE as far as y'all, but I feel fortunate to have seen as much of it as I have.

Started with the Commodore 64 when I was 5. Outside of myself and my best friend writing silly "hello world" programs in BASIC, it was mostly used for playing games. At 7, my parents got an IBM XT. I learned a lot about computers and between that and their next computer (about 6 years later). I recall WordPerfect, and them paying me to input their receipts to calculate their sales tax paid in prep for them to do their taxes. I also became very familiar with DOS.

As we approached the "modern" era, by which I mean 486, they bought a computer when I was about 13 and at that point I became the IT administrator for the house. I wrote a batch file menuing system so my dad could figure out how to get to programs he wanted to use, eventually pissed him off because about every time he got familiar with an OS I'd change it... DOS w/ Windows 3.1 to OS/2 2.1 to Win95 to OS/2 Warp, was the progression IIRC? At that point I also got into the BBS world and ran my own BBS--probably not the only 15 year old in the world to have his own BBS at the time lol.

In high school I took a programming class. The first day I realized it was a joke. It was pretty much "here's a 'for loop', now practice this for the next three weeks and we'll move on'. So from day 1 I started my final project, which was essentially writing any program that needed to include the various lessons from the class. So I essentially wrote the old tank battle game "Scorched Earth" for the Apple 2gs.

Went to Purdue for electrical engineering, and my programming skills were brought into the modern era with C, as well as teaching me assembly. I have used assembly a grand total of once professionally, and hope I never need to again lol.

Now I work for the company that invented the hard drive in 1956, which was 5MB and about the size of a washing machine, and just announced our new 22TB and 26TB 3.5" HDDs 3 weeks ago in 3.5" form factor...

It's been a fun road...

Love me some scorched earth lolol

 

[balrog]

Ah Comodore64 typing in hex code from the magazine for databases and games, TRS80 reading from a cassette tape, easier than reading those cards on a Ti programmable calculator, and hella expensive PC Jr. Ah yes. A computer with the ultimate luxury of two floppies so you could have the compiler in one and your code in the other, or WordStar in one and the document in the other. When I stop to think what all we used to do, with all the equipment, that now gets stuffed into a "phone".