At college in the late 70s, the breakthru was a a new room full of terminals where you could make "virtual punch cards" (yes) for the mainframe. The name of the

At college in the late 70s, the breakthru was a a new room full of terminals where you could make "virtual punch cards" (yes) for the mainframe. The name of the terminal program was Roscoe - pretty much un-PC. These virtual punch cards sure were an improvement from the tangible punch cards. The turnaround for all that "SYSIN DD *" JCL and FORTRAN and PL/1 came down to PDQ. It was almost like you could feel the earth move under your feet... from batch execution to almost-interactive execution.