
Coding on tape – computer science A-level 1970s style - iamphilrae
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-35890450
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KineticLensman
Sigh! brings back memories.

1979 - Reigate Grammar School. The school didn't offer a comp. sci. exam but
we had a computer club (although no computer). I remember using a card punch
to write a factorial program. I can't remember the language. The cards were
taken to an insurance company down the road who did actually have a computer.
A couple of days later you'd get a print-out of the compilation errors, and
you'd start again. The future seemed so exiting back then. On this basis, I
went to Leeds University to study computing where on the first day, they
introduced us (as a prank) ... to the card punch machine.

Now get your new-fangled glass teletypes off my lawn!

~~~
anta40
A computer club, but no computer? OK this is weird. So what did you guys do at
the club, then?

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ptaipale
It's much like an astronomy club without a star or planet. You study the
theory and hope to see the practice one day.

My junior high (in Finland) had some programming lessons included in the
mathematics classes in circa 1981. Fragments of ALGOL and such. Got the first
computers in 1982.

(They were Swedish ABC-80's; Z80, 16 K RAM, black and white displays with
block graphics, one machine equipped with a disk drive, others with a "local
area network" implemented with the cassette tape interface which was
transmitting and receiving an FSK signal at something like 300 bits per second
so you could transfer programs between the units. Far more advanced than paper
punch tape, which I only learned to use with a telex & encryption machine in
the army...)

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jejones3141
Wow. Back in the spring of 1971, thanks to NSF a number of high school
students and teachers, I one of the former, got to go for a few weeks to the
University of Oklahoma where Dr. Richard V. Andree would lecture us on BASIC
programming and the fundamentals of numerical methods on Saturdays and then on
other days through the week we each got our hands on an ASR-33 hooked up to a
Data General Supernova that could have four people running the BASIC
interpreter at a time (!). After that, I kept a notebook that I would write
programs in in BASIC with no chance of running them and sucked down the
computer-related books in the school and town library, including one English
book with such exotica as Extended Mercury Autocode. After a junior year with
no computer access, vo-tech school exposed me to unit record machines and an
RCA 301 (ended up writing self-modifying code to do a decimal multiply) and
eventually RPG on the OKC public school system's 370. On to OU, where the
undergraduates all had to use punched cards--it was an IBM shop, so it was the
horrors of JCL again, though I hadn't seen anything else but the Data General,
so I didn't know any better.

Very different days those were.

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dwarman
(Yorkshiremen Moments in 3, 2, 1)

First program: Sieve of Eratosthenes in ALGOL 60, typed onto paper tape on a
Friden Flexowriter and run (ran first time too) on an Elliott 803. Year was
1963. I did get to touch the cabinet, but was not allowed to mount the tape.

First computer: 1967, Elliott 4130, from the inside out as commissioning tech
employed at Elliott's in Elstree. 1000 cps paper tape readers were quite
something. Especially when they failed.

Elliotts computers absorbed into ICL 1968/9\. So any schools using 903's had
to be using old refurnbished units. I would have thought.

1968: same time, evening degree at Birkbek College, prepared CS projects on
IBM punched cards and handed the stacks to the priesthood via a little hole in
a wall for running on the Atlas. 2 day turn-round. A step backwards, for me,
after such intimacy wth the 4130. Fun fact: the course was not called CS in
those days, not yet. So I got Mathematical Sciences with Physics on my piece
of paper.

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tonyedgecombe
1979 - We were hand writing Fortran out on cards, there was a two week turn
around to find out if we had made any mistakes (or the operator had miss-typed
the code). I have no idea where they went to be executed.

We also had an Olivetti machine with very limited (240 bytes) core store, I'm
pretty sure it was one of these:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olivetti#/media/File:Olivetti_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olivetti#/media/File:Olivetti_Programma_101-2.jpg)

A couple of us used to go to the computing teaching centre in Oxford
University where they let us write BASIC on a system called the mod-one, I've
no idea who made it.

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peter303
The legend is that Bill Gates and Paul Allen wrote BASIC on a punchtape for
the new Altair microcomputer while at Harvard, flew the punchtape to
Albuquerque, and had the BASiC running on the first day of debugging. They had
written a CPU emulator on a Harvard computer and their BASIC on top of that.
So the morale is you didnt need a lot of punchtape iterations if you did it
carefully. Todays semi-compilation as you type in the code may contribute to a
certain intellectual laziness. It easy to recompile hundreds of times during
development.

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walshemj
Back in 73/74 we had to send out code off on coding sheets that where
processed at the local college.

The first language we learnt was a cut down training assembly language CECIL
we moved on to BASIC the next year.

BTW I was the CSE lower stream ie the exams for those leaving at 16.

Funny thing was as computers where the maths department as I only did a CSE I
wasn't allowed to do the A level computing in the 6th form - even though I got
the highest possible grade in my CSE maths.

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SagelyGuru
1975 - writing as a coursework assignment a keyboard driver in assembly code
for a PDP minicomputer. Pressed keys would set up interrupts, be interpreted,
and printed back on the teletype. Got the instructions down to the minimal two
metres of paper tape, read it in, and it worked! Worth 5% of one module of a
computing course :)

The most impressive thing about it all was how fast the paper tape reader has
read it in.

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SixSigma
At least it wasn't just cardboard

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CARDboard_Illustrative_Aid_to_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CARDboard_Illustrative_Aid_to_Computation)

~~~
vic-traill
Not related directly to computers, but related to the use of cardboard
representations in learning models:

I took piano lessons on lunch hour once a week in elementary school. For those
students without a piano at home, they distributed a fold-out cardboard piano
keyboard. The kid was supposed to practice on the cardboard keyboard all week,
and then play an actual piano once a week during the lesson.

We were fortunate and had an upright piano at home. I tried out a friend's
cardboard keyboard a couple of times out of curiousity - pretty unsatisfactory
feedback loop, to say the least.

Looking at the link for CARDIAC provided above, I think that approach might
have actually worked not badly. You could learn all the core concepts, hand
assemble a program, and then 'execute' it by moving the values through the
cells. Not the most glitzy experience, but the fundamentals are there.

I can't say the same for the cardboard keyboard; not hearing what you're
'playing' is a pretty big obstacle.

~~~
SixSigma
This is a tragic tale. I think I would have enjoyed a Cardiac to learn machine
code. I first learned code from copying listings on Teletext, they called it
Telesoftware [1] into a book. I had no access to any computers.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telesoftware](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telesoftware)

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basicplus2
luxury! we had to program our HP in school by colouring in the cards for it to
read one by one.. one step up from punch cards as we could re-use them

