Memories of College Computer Classes

[polyvue]

Borates [...] will lead to world peace!

Better living through chemistry?

I was browsing another forum and saw someone who is held out to be an 'expert' trying to explain where cobalt spots come from in a fiberglass pool.

Silly poster. Everyone knows that fortran is commonplace in fiberglass pools... cobalt spots come from the sun, or some place like that. Except in Indonesia: Java is preferred.

Do you c what I mean?

[CarlD]

Better living through chemistry?


Silly poster. Everyone knows that fortran is commonplace in fiberglass pools... cobalt spots come from the sun, or some place like that. Except in Indonesia: Java is preferred.

Do you c what I mean?

Gotta stop breathing those pool chem fumes, pal!

[waterbear]

Better living through chemistry?


Silly poster. Everyone knows that fortran is commonplace in fiberglass pools... cobalt spots come from the sun, or some place like that. Except in Indonesia: Java is preferred.

Do you c what I mean?

memories of college when I took Fortran IV level G and had to submit punch cards! Back then they told us not to bother with Cobol because it was a dead language. For a dead language it's doing pretty good 40 years later!

I have Java for breakfast these days with cream and sugar!


(I'll behave now but I can't vouch for polyvue)

[CarlD]

Fortran IV, Pascal (Waterloo!) , PL/I, COBOL, and, for the last 28 years, SAS. If you are in Clinical Trials, you are writing in SAS, Oracle, or SQL/Server--or in something that talks to one of those 3--or all 3!

[waterbear]

I still have nightmares about PL/1!

[CarlD]

I actually enjoyed PL/I a great deal, but the IBM manuals were absurd. I wanted to know how to do something, and no manual or text covered it. I finally called a friend and he had the answer...I then went back to the manual and there was NO WAY I could have gleaned how to do what I wanted to do from that. Hated Cobol, hated Fortran IV almost as much.

[waterbear]

Stayed away from Cobol since I was a chem major at the time I was taking computer courses. Took to fortran like a duck to water. It just made SENSE!
So did SPSS. PL/1 and APL were not intuitive at all.
As far as databases go, back in the day I had my own data company (after a stint as a machine language programmer for a small software and hardware firm) and we did custom databases in dBase and "desktop publishing" in Wordstar (anyone remember CP/M?)
I was going to switch my major to computers but my advisor said not to because there were not enough jobs to go around and there were more programmers around then they would ever need!
Realize this was in '73-''74 and was WAY before the PC (OR Apple or Commodore or Trash80 or Atari even exited (There weren't even home video games, let alone cell phones, then--we played pong and asteroids in bars by dropping in quarters!)
Good memories!