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Details for AJohn

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Added by AJohn on 16 May 2024 at 20:06

Old guy here! My first programming experience was FORTRAN IV on PUNCH CARDS! We ran our programs on the University's IBM 360 using the WATFOR compiler.

Man sitting in old-fashioned mainframe computer room

No, that's not me in the picture. Engineering students never actually got to see the computer itself, just the little window where the Sys Ops would take our decks and return our output...an hour or two later! I'm pretty sure this was our textbook, though.

Fortan IV manual cover

My first BASIC program was written on a DEC PDP-7 that was hooked up to an ANALOG computer! They called it a "Hybrid Computing System". One of a kind! Seriously, how many people can say they've programmed an analog computer?

1960s analog computer room

My first personal computer was an Atari 800. What a great little computer!

Atari 800 personal computer system brochure cover

"Timeless" LOL! And yes, I had that "advanced peripheral"...a cassette tape-based storage system! I also had Monkey Wrench, a DIS-assembler program and, to my knowledge, the only cartridge ever designed for the right-hand slot.

Atari Basic right-hand slot for Monkey Wrench DIS-assembler

I ran it against every game cartridge I owned, which might explain why I made a career out of fixing other people's code!

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