dan wrote:

OTOH, my first computer was a PDP 11/45 (?) which only had paddles and
blinking lights.

I took my first programming class on a CDC-6400 - Programmed using
cards, baby!

the PDP 11 was the elec eng lab.
Wow, was running the non-colliding train exercise.
We would have settled for the lab lights working properly.
that was assembler.

Fortan (maths) was punched cards, later mark sense (fsck)
These went into an ICL ??? under George 4.
If you were lucky, you could do it interactively with a teletype
Murder on the fingers
Naken ladies on stools from the paper tape accessory.

Later it was Decwriters (LA??) into a PDP11/70 running unix and you
progged in basic (physics, maths, psych, etc).

We reverently descended into the bowels of the building
and offered our card stacks to the priests behind the counter, then
returned later in the hope that our output was indeed resting on the
output table - hardly dreaming in might have actually (gasp) compiled
and (whoa) run, and (dream on) produced the output we desired...

Things like the 8 queens problem and recursive sorts were real wow items!

Fortran, Dam burst simulations (erk), 1 boxen of cards {:-(
Graphics by printed characters.

Algol, Towers of Hanoi,

Sadly, I'm using Thunderbird for newsgroups and wondering if the T-bird
programmers forgot all those lessons on matching sort method to load.