On Thu, 8 Feb 2018 20:33:02 -0700, rbowman wrote:

On 02/08/2018 10:10 AM, wrote:
On Thu, 08 Feb 2018 15:13:46 -0000, "James Wilkinson Sword"
wrote:


It used to be old folk didn't know what a computer was, and the teenagers were the ones on the bulletin boards. (First computer - ZX Spectrum)

Speak for yourself. I was in the computer business 53 years ago.
They did run on kerosene tho ;-)


That's about right. My first programming was in FORTRAN IV on a
System/360 Model 30 in 1965, iirc. I thought it really sucked. I did
hardware control systems until the '70s when you could stake out a
microprocessor on the kitchen table and play with it. Logic is logic,
relays, TTL, whatever.

When I was dabbling in code, I was writing PIOCS assembler because I
was writing a diagnostic program to test hardware on DOS systems
without having to install anything. It ran as a batch program.
5 or 6 years later, guys were still running it. It was written for DOS
19 or so but it still ran on VSE.
My next big foray was writing in dBase. I came up with a barcode
inventory system we used for a $12 million parts inventory with 15
guys dipping into the pot and no dedicated "counter" man.
When you are dealing with CEs the trick is to make it easier than
using a pencil that they usually didn't use anyway.
It actually worked out well and we seldom actually lost anything.
Before that with 15 guys keeping 15 paper logs we lost stuff all the
time and they wasted hours each month trying to balance their book
with the one in Boulder.