4 ms·
Punched cards were a thing of the past when I first encountered computers (in the form of ROM BASIC machines like the TRS80 and PET4032), but there's just somet
by greenbit 3y ago
Punched cards were a thing of the past when I first encountered computers (in the form of ROM BASIC machines like the TRS80 and PET4032), but there's just something fascinating about being able to physically hold the individual lines of your program in your hand.
These days if you want to run a program to crunch some numbers, the program is one file, and the data another - but back then, since you fed the whole 'job' into the card reader at once, you could change the data set by just swapping out the cards.
Not saying that this was in any way better. Just that the idea of it feels so alien - and this was the era in which BASIC first evolved.
- eesmith 3y agoDarthmouth BASIC used teletype terminals, not punched card input. The article has a picture, and comments "Dartmouth did better. At any time, when the program was in memory, you could use SAVE to save it from being forgotten when you finish working with the computer, and RUN to compile and execute it right away."
- greenbit 3y agoAs may be, just going on observation that when I got to college, several of the profs still had punch decks lying around the offices. Granted that said offices were not more than 3 minutes walk from the computing center where the mainframe lived. Clearly anyone miles from campus, or anyone seeking any kind of interactive session, would want a tty. But evidently if you wanted to run your program more than once, and didn't want to incur the rental charge for online "DASD" storage, batch-job card decks had been an option. I presume that did not exclude BASIC programs. Also, I suppose "era in which BASIC first evolved" would have better been stated as "part of the era in which BASIC first flourished"