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shhh! you'll wake them all up ...
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
"Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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How Enigma would say...
Take a deep breath and relax, start to move slowly, very slowly...
M.D.V.
If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
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I don't hear so well anymore. Would you please speak up.
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No - I usually have music playing.
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This marauder heard a rough tune (7)
"I didn't mention the bats - he'd see them soon enough" - Hunter S Thompson - RIP
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"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
"Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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CORSAIR
Sounds like Coarse Air - rough tune.
Software rusts. Simon Stephenson, ca 1994. So does this signature. me, 2012
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YAUT - well done
"I didn't mention the bats - he'd see them soon enough" - Hunter S Thompson - RIP
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I figured you'd still have a pirate hangover...
Software rusts. Simon Stephenson, ca 1994. So does this signature. me, 2012
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In truth I was being lazy but we haven't had a theme for a while now
"I didn't mention the bats - he'd see them soon enough" - Hunter S Thompson - RIP
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How they ran from the fort !
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The first computer programming I did for money was done in FORTRAN and ran on a DEC PDP-11.
ETA: the program's purpose was to figure out the best way to load a furnace in a steel mill. As I recall, the number one ingredient was crushed cars.
"They have a consciousness, they have a life, they have a soul! Damn you! Let the rabbits wear glasses! Save our brothers! Can I get an amen?"
modified 21-Sep-21 2:39am.
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Close to mine: FORTRAN-66 on an HP-1000 minicomputer, March of 1980.
Software Zen: delete this;
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My first program was in Fortran IV and was for an IBM 360 in 1968.
Last time I used Fortran was in 1988 on a MicroVax.
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Fortran IV IBM 360 Watfor compiler - February 1971 University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg as a student.
First paid program on same computer as a research assistant December 1971. 50 years ago.
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I was using WATFOR on an IBM 7040 as an undergraduate. I got paid a few dollars an hour to write programs for the Dept of Computer Science's administrative unit, for tabulating marks or something like that. That might have been in 1970. In 1971 I was in 3rd year Computer Science and during the vacations I was employed by Computer Sciences of Australia where one of my duties involved writing programs in various languages, including Fortran, that could be used as acceptance tests after upgrades to the system software on the Univac 1108. After completing my degree in 1972 I joined Control Data Australia where again Fortran was the main languages used by our clients on the CDC 6600.
Throughout all of these jobs, however, I probably wrote more code in the assembly languages of the respective computers - plus others such as the English Electric KDF9, Control Data 1700, Digital Equipment PDP-8.
Fortran lives on - but none of those companies are still around.
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After university, I worked in a mining company which had a CDC 7000. I remember that it had a file system called LISA (Linked Access Sequential Access I think it meant). When they upgraded to a CDC Cyber something it was fantastic. We used to compile the program and then do the fine tuning in the assembly output to get speed. That was the time when we used manual stop watches to measure the speed of a program when we tried to get the best time possible, a couple of seconds more or less didn't make a difference.
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In programming the CDC 6600 I also used to recode the innermost stuff in assembly language for speed. Time on our system was charged by the second. High priority jobs were scheduled immediately but cost 50c per second. That was in 1973 when my entry-level job paid $6000 per year, so it is more like $5 per second today. The compilers were not as good as optimizing as today's compilers so a good recode in assembly language could result in a 10x speedup, i.e. a 10x reduction in cost. In addition there was a charge for the number of I/O operations but there was also a multiplier for the field-length (the amount of main memory you were using at the time of the I/O) since the job tied up main memory due to the I/O buffers needing to be fixed during the transfer. This meant it was also very beneficial to structure a job to reduce its memory utilization to the absolute minimum during an I/O phase and expand it to the maximum during a CPU-bound phase. Again there was the possibility for 10-fold reductions in cost.
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My first programming class in college (fall of 1979) used WATFIV on an IBM 370.
Software Zen: delete this;
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FORTRAN IV on WATFOR was my first high level language (if you exclude Honeywell Time Sharing Basic). I was still at school in 1974 and borrowed a textbook overnight and read it cover-to-cover. Then upset the teacher it belonged to by writing more complex programs than she could. (Coding sheets sent to the local county council for mispunching onto 80-char punch cards - turn-round time: 2 weeks)
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We had 026 and 029 card punches and we had to punch them ourselves. Submit them to the operators and get your printout then next day. If you knew somebody in there, later the same day.
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Good old VMS. We rebooted only when we updated the OS. It would run for years.
FORTRAN was the best language for that OS.
The C compiler had lots of bugs.
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Close to mine too. My first computer programming I did for money was done in FORTRAN 77. I recorded it on cards and it was run on an IBM HOST in a computing center in Madrid. The program purpose was a price adjustment for interurban bus transport lines in Spain.
Sorry for my bad English
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Me too: DEC PDP 11 with RSX 11M in 1983.
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