Isn't C a programming language for electronical engineers?

djsfantasi

Joined Apr 11, 2010
9,156
I remember college courses that included programming in specific languages as a requirement. In that environment, I learned several languages. Learning each language involved learning a specific syntax. In this manner, I learned programming. Various constructs in various languages taught me the basics of programming.

It also taught me a sexist rule. Hanging around the computer center window where you picked up your results, was a great opportunity to meet beautiful women.

We’d go to the keypunch, where I’d debug their programs, keypunch the corrections and when she had a working programs, we’d go out for dinner, drinks and whatever happened next ;)
 

djsfantasi

Joined Apr 11, 2010
9,156
Oh boy! I do believe I'm getting the vapors. "It's a southern thing" View attachment 200745
Yeah! You're right some things never go out of style. Hubba hubba.
Those are programmed patch panels. They have nothing to do with key punches. A keypunch machine punches holes in an oak tag card, to represent a program or data. Originally, computers had no permanent memory to store programs and software was stored as a series of punched holes on a card. Similarly, data was stored on cards instead of computer memory.

These were the days I learned software development.

746356B3-DF95-496A-A1B1-1EEED44B88B2.jpeg90503983-28BF-4CDA-B71E-0A8976C3C85B.jpeg
 

nsaspook

Joined Aug 27, 2009
13,079
Those are programmed patch panels. They have nothing to do with key punches. A keypunch machine punches holes in an oak tag card, to represent a program or data. Originally, computers had no permanent memory to store programs and software was stored as a series of punched holes on a card. Similarly, data was stored on cards instead of computer memory.

These were the days I learned software development.

View attachment 200748View attachment 200749
dtc9000.jpeg
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNIVAC_9000_series
This was our primary data link computer in 1977 with card punch, reader and command console. We had several decks of cards for various link protocols.
 

Delta Prime

Joined Nov 15, 2019
1,311
Tell me,did they take care of you and give you the smoking 32KB memory? And did the edges of the consoles have cigarette burns on them? Haha!
 

SamR

Joined Mar 19, 2019
5,031
Once you had the program the way you wanted it you could run the card deck through a reader and have a punched tape made? Never used the tapes but punching a new card had to be easier than editing a tape. There were also card duplicators. Feed the deck in and it would punch a duplicate deck for you. There were a few cards at the front of the deck to tell the computer who to bill the time to and which program and hardware devices to use. Those would get worn and had to be duplicated regularly. The old card decks coined the phrase do not Fold, Staple, or Mutilate? Haven't seen that in a loooong time. Cards would be used for many things and collected to be read in as data input directly instead of having a data entry clerk transcribe it and key it in. IBM made a fortune off of 80 column punch cards.
 

nsaspook

Joined Aug 27, 2009
13,079
Once you had the program the way you wanted it you could run the card deck through a reader and have a punched tape made? Never used the tapes but punching a new card had to be easier than editing a tape. There were also card duplicators. Feed the deck in and it would punch a duplicate deck for you. There were a few cards at the front of the deck to tell the computer who to bill the time to and which program and hardware devices to use. Those would get worn and had to be duplicated regularly. The old card decks coined the phrase do not Fold, Staple, or Mutilate? Haven't seen that in a loooong time. Cards would be used for many things and collected to be read in as data input directly instead of having a data entry clerk transcribe it and key it in. IBM made a fortune off of 80 column punch cards.
We had the special 5 level Baudot paper tape option because most messages were created on old teletype machines.
 

djsfantasi

Joined Apr 11, 2010
9,156
Once you had the program the way you wanted it you could run the card deck through a reader and have a punched tape made? Never used the tapes but punching a new card had to be easier than editing a tape. There were also card duplicators. Feed the deck in and it would punch a duplicate deck for you. There were a few cards at the front of the deck to tell the computer who to bill the time to and which program and hardware devices to use. Those would get worn and had to be duplicated regularly. The old card decks coined the phrase do not Fold, Staple, or Mutilate? Haven't seen that in a loooong time. Cards would be used for many things and collected to be read in as data input directly instead of having a data entry clerk transcribe it and key it in. IBM made a fortune off of 80 column punch cards.
I had an interesting experience with those card duplicators.

I was called into my college instructors for being charged with plagiarism. One assignment had duplicate programs turned in. Someone had run a deck through a duplicator.

The assignment was a maze runner. Fortunately, I had used an algorithm that no one (except for the plagiarist) had used. I implemented a FIFO list for each junction so I didn’t have to backtrack. The other student didn’t understand the concept at all.

Punched cards had the last few columns reserved for a sequence number. That way, you could drop your deck and run them through a deck sorter to put your cards in order. A card sorter was another machine with a dedicated function to manage card storage.

After that experience, all my assignments started with a random sequence number and were numbered!
 

SamR

Joined Mar 19, 2019
5,031
My daughter informed me when she went to GA Tech the Tech Ladies motto was "The odds are good but the goods are odd". Rarely saw a girl in an engineering course at TN Tech. They made the English and History courses a nice change of scenery from the engineering building.
 

djsfantasi

Joined Apr 11, 2010
9,156
My daughter informed me when she went to GA Tech the Tech Ladies motto was "The odds are good but the goods are odd". Rarely saw a girl in an engineering course at TN Tech. They made the English and History courses a nice change of scenery from the engineering building.
Never heard that live! I’m checking with a couple of my GA Tech girlfriends to see if they heard it.

All I know, is that for four years at GA Tech, I always had one or more girls that I was dating at a time!
;)
 

SamR

Joined Mar 19, 2019
5,031
She was there about 20 years ago. In my dad's days there after WWII it was the Twiddly T****s from Agnes Scott although my mother was a hometown girl.
 

djsfantasi

Joined Apr 11, 2010
9,156
She was there about 20 years ago. In my dad's days there after WWII it was the Twiddly T****s from Agnes Scott although my mother was a hometown girl.
Ahhh, Agnes Scott! Remember “Animal House”? ...where the boys took a road trip to a women’s college? That’s what happened at Tech. Weekends, we’d go to Agnes Scott to find a date.

I was at Tech about 44 years ago, so probably didn’t date your daughter
 

MrSoftware

Joined Oct 29, 2013
2,188
I remember college courses that included programming in specific languages as a requirement. In that environment, I learned several languages. Learning each language involved learning a specific syntax. In this manner, I learned programming. Various constructs in various languages taught me the basics of programming.

It also taught me a sexist rule. Hanging around the computer center window where you picked up your results, was a great opportunity to meet beautiful women.

We’d go to the keypunch, where I’d debug their programs, keypunch the corrections and when she had a working programs, we’d go out for dinner, drinks and whatever happened next ;)
Times had definitely changed (for the worse?) by the 1990's. When I was in school (mid-late 1990's) you could count the girls in the engineering program on one hand. The engineering building was however connected to the business building, so we could walk to the building next door and see where all the girls went!
 
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