In my first 'real' job when I was 18, I was hired as a programmer to work on an accountancy package for DOS. It was quite radical at the time - the concept was

In my first 'real' job when I was 18, I was hired as a programmer to work on an accountancy package for DOS. It was quite radical at the time - the concept was to present double entry bookkeeping on the screen in the same layout as it would be in a paper book. A bit like Lotus 1-2-3 but with all the accountancy stuff already built in. Anyway, the firm I was working at only had 2 proper DOS machines, and one of those was reserved for the boss, but there were up to 3 programmers working on the software. If the DOS machine was in-use (which was most of the time) I had to spend the day 'writing' my code on another machine (an ACT Apricot PC). This machine, although it booted into DOS, was NOT IBM compatible, so the IDE software wouldn't run. All I had was the provided Word Processor app, so I wrote in that, sometimes for days, hoping that what I was typing was working code. I'd only know if I'd written working code once I'd transferred it via floppy disk and compiled it on the real DOS machine every few days. Not quite the same as coding on paper, but this thread reminded me of this part of my career.