"Drew Lawson" wrote in message ...
In article
"PDQ" writes:

"Drew Lawson" wrote in message ...
In article
"J. Clarke" writes:
Morris Dovey wrote:

SNIP

BTW, my first computer programming was in a US public school. I'm
still finding that useful, as today's paycheck reminds me.

--
Drew Lawson For it's not the fall, but landing,
That will alter your social standing

Must be nice to be so young.

My grade school had no computers - they had not been invented yet.

I saw my first computer in my last year of high school - you could walk inside it.

The first computer I played with was a 360-50 - only needed half a room for it.

Well, that first computer (a HP 2000) I used was also in my senior
year, and I never set eyes on it. It was somewhere across the
county, being shared by all the high schools. I hate to think what
the connection was, probably 300 baud. But we did have CRT terminals
and keyboards. So it's modern compared to a lot of stories I hear.


I don't remember the numbers on the computer but it was a burroughs and we had to be careful not to trip over the wires. It was the only "room" in the building that was air conditioned.

I remember 300 baud as "time out for coffee". Once got into a real setto with a know-it-all at work when he said 1600 was blazingly fast while I maintained all it did was allow one to "read the periods". In those days we had a 6400 line to a branch office in Montreal - didn't have to read the periods there.

Now I have a PC with more power than the 50 and it sits on my desk.

I occasionally reflect on the fact that my 6 year-old cell phone
has more computing power than was used for the Apollo program. Not
entirely sure that says good things about what we do with our current
potential, but that's a long discussion for some other day.

I still need a bigger and faster playtoy.

P D Q


--
Drew Lawson | I'd like to find your inner child
| and kick its little ass