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Oh NOOOO! (Said the Hazeltine 1500 Terminal with the BIG UGLY orange letters) 
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No, it had upper case, lower case and (some) symbols. Actually, the 1500 was one of the best all-around (very) dumb terminals of the time. Unfortunately, I was a poor CS student at the time and I couldn't afford it, so I ended up buying the HeathKit machine and then spent a whole summer with a soldering iron in one hand and a creased and worn assembly manual on the other ... not that any one of us buzzards highly respectable developers would do anything like that today! 
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VT100's and RSX 11/M. I had a hallelujia breakdown when they came out with the 102's!
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Believe it or not, I still work on a VAX system (when my primary customer gives me the time).
If I have my way, the system will be moved to a Windows solution as soon as I find a bucket of spare time.
Charlie Gilley
<italic>Stuck in a dysfunctional matrix from which I must escape...
"Where liberty dwells, there is my country." B. Franklin, 1783
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
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charlieg wrote: I still work on a VAX system
Details!
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It's a manufacturing system from circa 1981 (I think when DEC was breaking out). Lots of reporting, *very* custom sorting (makes my eyes water), all FORTRAN 66 (think short variable names).
Years ago, there was a "consultant" whose one claim to fame was to keep the VAX running. He had it in his basement. I have no idea how much $$ he made supporting this vax, but if you know anything about the DEC hardware back then, it was built like a tank. They just sit in the corner and run.
The system has now been migrated to a VAX emulation system (Charon VAX) that runs on a $500 PC.
Charlie Gilley
<italic>Stuck in a dysfunctional matrix from which I must escape...
"Where liberty dwells, there is my country." B. Franklin, 1783
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
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charlieg wrote: Years ago, there was a "consultant" whose one claim to fame was to keep the VAX running. He had it in his basement. I have no idea how much $$ he made supporting this vax, but if you know anything about the DEC hardware back then, it was built like a tank. They just sit in the corner and run.
They certainly did and they certainly were. At that company I worked at (circa 1982) we were using a big PDP-11/44 running RSX/11M. There were something like 6 RL02 units plugged into it (those cool 10MEGA BYTE removable hard drives) and we finally got a big 80MEGA BYTE fixed disk. This system supported 15 developers on a network of VT100 terminals too. We wrote a heck of a lot of software (DEC FORTRAN and Assembler) on that system.
Toward the end of my time there we started getting mini-VAX system which I didn't get a chance to work on but they (like the PDP) were really tough. We were installing that hardware in water and wastewater treatment plants.
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I like their stuff, especially recently.
I prefer the general development ecosystem on Linux based platforms. But the amount of really high powered tools and technologies in the Microsoft toolchain that "Make it easy to do big things" makes development fun again.
But I'll always be a pure "platform agnostic" C++/perl/SQL guy at heart.
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mikepwilson wrote: "Make it easy to do big things"
Unfortunately, it can lead to making small things more difficult.
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Thus they are a necessary evil.
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That's the spirit! Just enjoying the "coolness" of what you're doing without all the analysis and paralysis. Good for you! 
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VT100 was advanced technology! How about an IBM 360 with punch cards via COBOL! First program ever was 250 lines(cards). Got the program back from the University data center and it had 700 errors! lol. (circa 1970). C# and .Net have been great but I think the industry is now embracing JavaScript (TypeScript would be nice) and Angular along with a barrage of JS libraries. Microsoft has some serious catching up to do. They should have made .NET native to the IE browser. Never developed anything in Silverlight but it was a good idea. Cheers to all.
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Tim Carmichael wrote: Since I stopped developing almost exclusively on VAX/VMS, I have worked with Microsoft based systems.
Looks like we old farts all have something in common! 
I still remember the day in '92 I decided I'd learn Windows instead of MacOS. I had 2 books in front of me - Petzold's Programming Windows 3.1 and a couple of Mac programming manuals. After a brief read, I decided to go with Windows. Owning a PC helped. I haven't looked back since. I continue to have a lot of respect for Apple's software and UX - I just don't program for it.
Have once again started to feel the rush as I delve into Android (using C# as a development platform). 
/ravi
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I'm sure those that worked for the gestapo also liked getting a paycheck.
Wait.. did I just compare Microsoft to Nazi Germany? 
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I'd stopped with VAX/VMS 21 years before. How old are you?
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Started using VAX/VMS in college in January 1983... so, I've passed the half century mark.
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I thought it was going to end badly at one point!
You looking for sympathy?
You'll find it in the dictionary, between sympathomimetic and sympatric
(Page 1788, if it helps)
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ALL THESE WORLDS
ARE YOURS EXCEPT
EUROPA TRITON HELL, ALL OF THEM
ATTEMPT NO
LANDING THERE
Software Zen: delete this;
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Well the MS security update for SQL Server works. No one can access the database now.
You cannot even start the service.
Well I need to get to work finding the fix for the update.
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Ah! Finally, the perfectly secure system 
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So. MS have finally realised the potential of WOM1?
1 - Write Only Memory
You looking for sympathy?
You'll find it in the dictionary, between sympathomimetic and sympatric
(Page 1788, if it helps)
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