Memories of College Computer Classes

[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!

[CarlD]

Evan, I remember those days--WordStar was the first PC word-processor---I was a main-framer until the late '80's. I learned the Wang word processor system then, to learn to use a PC, someone gave me a copy of MultiMate, which looked just like the Wang system.

Since I started programming with Pascal, I actually picked up PL/I because I needed a dynamic linked list for a client's ap and SAS isn't designed for such dynamic data structures. PL/I was like a real-world version of Pascal, and the syntax is virtually the same as SAS, so it was a natural.

APL was simply insane. Statisticians loved it because you could invert a matrix in about 5 characters. SAS had PROC MATRIX which could do the same in about 20 characters. (Replaced by IML and I NEVER saw anyone use IML--too hefty a license fee).

FORTRAN IV drove me crazy with the GOTOs you had to use. But I could write in it.

Then there was that nightmare called....JCL...! (I was actually good at it but it was like having to hot wire your car and twist wires together to get the turn signals to go on, or the horn to blow).

[polyvue]

Did I start this hijack?

I was going to ask waterbear if the punch cards he alluded to earlier in the thread were made of stone but thought better of it. I might need to ask him a question sometime.

College for me meant projects written in RPG II, BAL 360 and COBOL (mostly) but the IBM's System 36, if I recall correctly, didn't use JCL and changes were made via a single-line (?) editor entitled X-Edit.

My first programming assignment entailed COBOL pgm debugging (only a wuss needed to rely on Abend-Aid, right?!) and rewriting JCL and BMS mapsets/panels. Got to write the first micro-computer program for the company I worked for -- they just dumped a new IBM PC XT on my desk and said to make it talk to the mainframe. (Thank you, Irma! Bored?)

Left programming for the lower echelons of project management in the early 1990s and have been proudly unproductive ever since.

[PoolDoc]

Looks like down home days for old geeks!

Yep, I've done punch cards. But it was in high school and what we liked was the punch litter which was great for prank confetti. I'm an error prone typist and I HATED the lack of a backspace on the cards them selves.

PoolDoc

[CarlD]

There was nothing like watching some grad student come in with all his data in six long card boxes (had to be 32" long)--and drop them!

By 1980 they should have bought a tape for $30 and loaded the data onto the tape--it took about 4 or 5 JCL cards to do that. After that, the cards in the program would be a handful at most. They were pretty good for propping up short legs on tables, though!

By then TSO was available for many, many and cards were anachronistic. In 1982, at UNC-CH, they introduced WYLBUR as a cheaper alternative to TSO. You could do some pretty cool interactive programming in WYLBUR, and later at CPI in DC they had SuperWylbur. Other dialects were WylburPlus--and all were programmable for interactive editing and job submission.

[waterbear]

There was nothing like watching some grad student come in with all his data in six long card boxes (had to be 32" long)--and drop them!

Did that with my final project in my advanced FORTRAN class! Only 2 boxes though!

[waterbear]

Left programming for the lower echelons of project management in the early 1990s and have been proudly unproductive ever since.

I Left it when C++ became the flavor of the week. Never could get the hang of OO topdown programming. Where are the subroutines? What do you mean I have to explicitly define all my variable and arrays at the start? I don't know what I will need until I start coding!
IMHO, this is when bloatware began!

[polyvue]

I Left it when C++ became the flavor of the week. Never could get the hang of OO topdown programming. Where are the subroutines? What do you mean I have to explicitly define all my variable and arrays at the start? I don't know what I will need until I start coding!
IMHO, this is when bloatware began!

I still don't get Java/C++ and all that oop stuff. Younger folks who take to this concept (having been taught it at university) can code in it but hate debugging it. Not surprising, as there's no detectable linear flow. "We don't need no stinkin' logic..." Just look under every rock (object) and rely on automated trace tools. Well, different paradigm. Funny thing is, where I work, COBOL / IDMS programmers hired as consultants make MORE money than the endless supply of .NET / SAS / SQL / Java coders that come out of the schools. It's totally flipped from 10 years ago. Procedural programmers are a dying breed but companies /gov'ts still have plenty of COBOL code running under some flavor of z/OS.

Weirdest programming langauge environment I ever dealt with: DACL. It was a proprietary language Xerox cooked up for its mini computers in the 1970s. Some strange mix of assembler and BASIC. Pure spaghetti.

[waterbear]

FORTRAN IV drove me crazy with the GOTOs you had to use. But I could write in it.

.

The GOTOs gave me a lot of practice for my stint as an assembly language programmer!

Had to love the power of the DO statement, though!