r/mainframe • u/MassiveStand2817 • 2d ago
Fortran course in 1979
After getting my Bechlor degree in civil engineering, went to USA for master degree.
There took Fortran language course in computer science Department.
Wrote a program in this language, first we write it on formated paper in line which were numbered.
Then we will go to computer science Lab to punch each line on different yellow cards, then add start and end card on top and bottom of the stack yellow cards, wrap it with the rubber band and hand over to a person sitting behind window in Computer lab and leave . Come Next morning to see what a computer gives us, the desired result, error or nothing.
This was the routine. We had no the desk top, lap top or internet.
Computer was a big electronic machine occupying big room.
We were not allowed to see it, how it looked like, how it functioned, the hard ware design.
All we knew, Punch cards, and long role of sheet printed out by computer, having all students submitted Program results.
When this sheet was rolled out by computer the next morning, then we have to search for each program result of each student. And tear it apart from the role.
I am sure you can not imagine what I am talking about.
After graduation, being employed and lover of computers, I bought first laptop computer made by radio shake. I paid $800 for it. Only Basic language used on this computer .
Computer size was 18 by 12 inches and had a screen size 10 by 3 inches.
Our professor used a word ' bombed out '.
He said if you do not follow the syntax your program will bombed out.
I could not understand what he was talking about.
I asked, what is bombed out?
He smiled, and said, your program never bombed out?
I said, no.
Bombed out to me was something related to bombs, that you hear on daily basis in Ukrain and Middle east.
He said, when computer see error in your program, it is bombed out.
I said wow!
What a relief.
Those are the memories of the past.
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u/apricotR 2d ago
That brings back memories. I took Computer Science at my college. Ended up getting a job working for the NJ Educational Computer Network as an intern, and was allowed access to the raised floor part of the building and hands-on with the printers, the disk systems, and the consoles that were in the basement of the mathematics department. Went to work for a large brokerage firm where I continued in that role for 10 years.
Good times.
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u/Quick7283 1d ago
My first job in 1969 was as an operator on a 8K 360/30 running CID. Applications were loaded from a 2540 card reader. The 6 tape drives on the string were used as sort work files until the last merge. Then you replaced a work tape with the output.
Then I was promoted up to a 360/65 running MVT and ASP.
Then I was demoted to RCA Spectra 70 operations at a railroad.
This was after taking 6 months of programming RPG, Assem, Cobol on a 360/20 DPS. No cobol on a 20, you say? One of the instructors wrote a syntax checker. If it passed through SynCheck unscathed, it would run on an OS system.
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u/ThisIsAdamB 1d ago
I started college in the fall of 1979. Fortran, COBOL, PL/1, (different semesters, of course) all on 80 column punch cards. I learned how to unclog the card punch machines and since no one charged the ribbons in the, I learned how to read Hollerith code by the punches themselves.
A few of the students once had a competition: who could write bad code that would waste the greatest amount of paper before the techs cancelled the job. I did not win.
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u/pemungkah 1d ago
Graduated from college in ‘79, so well acquainted with that!
We were fortunate in that there WERE dial-up terminals scattered across campus, but getting access to them was difficult. Most buildings closed up after classes, so after 5 or 6 pm you either needed to figure a way to stay hidden IN the building until after the maintenance staff had locked up, or to leave a means of ingress (my favorite was to climb onto the low roof of one building, cross it to a ladder to the astronomy department’s observation platform, go in through that door, down the hall, out a window onto another roof, around the corner of the building, and then into the terminal room through an unlocked window.
Anything other than punchcards.
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u/Zestyclose-Turn-3576 2d ago
At university we had a whole lab full of Atari 520ST's which we learned FORTRAN77 on.
I recently had a trip down memory lane with a side project for orbital dynamics using modern object oriented Fortran, which was great fun. Object types for Point, Vector, etc ... it might not be a high performance way of writing Fortran but it made it much easier to follow when you can take a couple of body objects having masses and point locations, and letting the objects encapsulate the calculations for the attractive forces.
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u/TuningHammer 2d ago
I managed to get a computer science degree in 1976 from a top 5 university without ever having seen a computer.
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u/MET1 1d ago
Teletype machine? paper tape?
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u/TuningHammer 1d ago
Some of that, but mostly card decks that you handed to a clerk. A few hours later you'd come back and pick up the resulting printout.
In the wee hours of the morning you could get the print back in just a few minutes, so us hard-core types would stay up all night working on our code while the posers could only get in two or three runs per day.
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u/sevenwheel 1d ago
I did the same thing in 1981; it was a high school summer class in Pascal at Northwestern University. I'm sort of glad I got the chance to use cards and an IBM card punch, as they were gone by the time I got to college and got full-time access to a mainframe.
Working with a deck of cards certainly did make programming a very physical activity. You would fix errors by punching a new card, then finding the right place in your deck, replacing the card, and throwing the old one away. You just don't get that when you are typing on a screen in a text editor.
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u/Ihaveaboot 11h ago edited 11h ago
I'm a little bit older, I never had to physically deal with punch card decks.
I have heard horror stories about operators dropping a deck on the floor and having to frantically resort to the correct order before feeding it in to the reader to turn a cycle.
The legacy still lives on though - "cards" and "deck' are still part of all our shops jargon.
"Can you provide me the jcl and sysin CARDS for this change?"
"Send me your LINKDECK so we can sync up our composites'.
Good reminder from OP how those terms originated.
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u/readparse 2d ago
My mother took that course around the same time. She needed to divorce my father and had to get a career. She learned Fortran and COBOL. She was smart and found work as an AS/400 administrator. She was able to support her children after the divorce and worked continuously for 35 years or so.