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Slight eyebrow-raise at “pioneer” - my mum was a programmer in 1956. She tells me they didn’t have enough RAM to fit the whole program in. Nothing changes.
by bboreham 7y ago
Slight eyebrow-raise at “pioneer” - my mum was a programmer in 1956.
She tells me they didn’t have enough RAM to fit the whole program in. Nothing changes.
- pvg 7y agoI hope the author pops in to point out that their father knows kung fu and see what you have to say then!
- zanethomas 7y agoSame here, my dad was a programmer of the US Navy's 2nd transistorized computer at KNOTS (Naval Ordinance Test Station, Pasadena, later the Naval Undersea Warfare Center,San Diego) beginning some time between 1955, when we arrive in Pasadena, and 1957 when I first began stacking punch cards and drawing on computer paper. I've been programming since 1975.
- JJMcJ 7y agoOld timers have told me of the "phases". Like load phase 1. Load data cards and start Phase 1. Punch cards are produced with modified data for phase 2. Load phase 2. Load Phase 2 data and start Phase 2. Run Phase 2. There were often even more phases.
- AnimalMuppet 7y agoMy mom was also a programmer in the 1950s. She tells about one CPU where you could use patch cords to change the meaning of the opcodes. My mind boggles.
- noneeeed 7y agoOne of my tutors at uni would get us to do presentations on old papers. I remember one that described a novel very early GUI system. They built the hardware by basically wiring two machines together at the bus level (one was essentially the graphics card), and adding a bunch of additional instructupions using TTL logic chips, it was immensely impressive.
- antonvs 7y agoEntering programs via front panel switches was another early technique, e.g.: https://raymii.org/s/articles/Toggling_in_a_simple_program_on_the_DEC_PDP-8_and_PiDP-8_using_the_switch_register.html https://raymii.org/s/articles/Toggling_in_a_simple_program_o...
- fernly 7y agoProgramming the ENIAC was done that way, but that was from ~1947 through the very early 1950s. Ask her if this looks familiar. https://media.phillyvoice.com/media/images/02102016_ENIAC_programmers_LA.2e16d0ba.fill-735x490.jpg https://media.phillyvoice.com/media/images/02102016_ENIAC_pr...
- pacaro 7y agoOk I'm gonna try and hijack this thread! My mother was a programmer in the mid to late 60s, as was my father. As am I [edit: currently! I'm obviously not a programmer in the 60s] I'm curious as to the size of the population that can make the same claim (programmer with both parents being programmers) Analyst/programmer/developer/engineer
- dluan 7y agoMy mom was a programmer who eventually worked on telecom, and my dad was an engineer working on embedded systems, both immigrants from China who studied in America in the 70s/early-80s. My childhood memories involve lots of computer building, modems, and reams of pajama paper (which somehow never ended up in the fax machine) I, on the other hand, am a very poor programmer.
- chrisseaton 7y agoI think that’s definitely changed. I can’t imagine any situation these days even embedded where you would run out of memory for program storage.
- noneeeed 7y agoYou'd be surprised. There are contexts in the embedded world where very price conscious customers will require a max price per part, limiting younto a particular size of PIC microcontroller. Its certainly a lot rarer than it used to be though thankfully.
- jibal 7y agoThe IBM 1620 that I programmed in 1965 had 20,000 binary-coded digits. Each digit was 6 bits -- 4 numeric bits, a check bit, and a flag bit to indicate the high order digit of variable-length decimal-encoded numbers. Of course there wasn't enough RAM ... we used phases, overlays, and other techniques to juggle the code. Later I helped build the ARPANET at UCLA ... that was 1969-70. We were still pioneers.