51 ms·

This was really cool... I'm dying to know how you did WFH in the 1960s though? That's well before the pc/modem generation ?? I'm tempted to say it was probably

This was really cool... I'm dying to know how you did WFH in the 1960s though? That's well before the pc/modem generation ?? I'm tempted to say it was probably still the punch card era ... Did they punch the code onto cards at home, and mail the stacks to the client ?

saalweachter 3y ago
Before my time, but my understanding is that in ye olden days you'd write out your programs by hand, transcribe it to machine code on punch cards, and then submit the stack of cards for batch processing.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- mech422 3y ago
  that's what I was guessing, but I wasn't sure ... I came in a bit after punch cards :-P
- arrowsmith 3y ago
  My uncle tells me that this is exactly how he would complete his programming assignments while getting his engineering degree back in the '70s.
- com 3y ago
  I remember when we could use an HB pencil for optical reader cards - no punch at home necessary!
  - hinkley 3y ago
    My dad switched into IT in the late 80’s, via community college. So being a community college, they still had a machine that ran on card readers. As I recall they had a machine that took the “scantron” cards and spit out punched ones. And I don’t remember if they had it or I just read about it later, but someone did eventually invent a punchcard sorter. You had to number the cards, and then you could stuff a dropped deck into the machine and it would save your bacon.
  - kragen 3y ago
    did you write software in this way i've only ever seen it for multiple-choice questions
    - com 3y ago
      Yep! Logo I recall.
- kitd 3y ago
  Code was usually written out by hand (and code-reviewed) first before being sent off for compilation. If there was no terminal at home, the first part of that could be done over fax/telephone.
jojobas 3y ago
Also wondering what was the nature of of this work in the first place. Hundreds of women familiar with assembly programming couldn't have appeared of thin air to go mentally execute their code and punch it into cards.
- kragen 3y ago
  maybe ibm wouldn't hire them back after they got married or had a baby
  - jojobas 3y ago
    It was a booming market, why wouldn't they? I guess it was a possibility, but then it's a prime example of capitalism fixing/exploiting the pay gap.
    - mcv 3y ago
      Even as late as the 1970s, it was not uncommon for women to automatically get fired once they got married. Some jobs, like secretary, nurse or teacher, were deemed suitable for unmarried women, but married women had to stay home, raise kids, and run the household. This left a lot of highly capable women outside the workforce. A company specifically created to hire those women was a brilliant idea.
      - Amezarak 3y ago
        In the US the labor force participation rate in 1975 for women was 45%; today it is 57%. Was it really that much worse in the UK?
        kragen 3y ago
        that 45% was to a significant extent poor women doing unskilled labor: maids, factory workers, cooks. not office workers however, shirley did not found her company 'freelance programmers' in 01975 she founded it in 01959 the ensuing 20 years were among the most successful years in history for feminism in the usa and uk, marked by, among other things, rapidly growing female participation in the labor force
ajb 3y ago
Initially that company didn't even have their own computer and mailed programs to a bureaux with a two day turnaround (I read previously on her website). So being in the office didn't noticeable speed things up. The bureaux was a third party, I think their clients didn't have a computer either but I don't know.
- hinkley 3y ago
  (bureaux is the plural form) I can barely comprehend a build-test-compile cycle that involved standing in line to use a machine. Sending them through the postal service is mind boggling. I don’t think anywhere near this many neurodivergent people could have worked in IT back then. It would have been too much.
  - ajb 3y ago
    It would have required a different mindset, more like the degree of manual checking needed to write a mathematics paper. Plenty of mathematicians seem to be neurodivergent, but maybe not the kind of neurodivergence you are thinking of?
- mech422 3y ago
  oh thanks!
euroderf 3y ago
A Texas Instruments (IIRC) terminal with a telephone handset cradle and a thermal printer for output. So yes, the extreme terseness of "ed" and other Unix CLI utilities was a feature not a bug.
- hinkley 3y ago
  The earliest teletypes were practically ticker tape weren’t they? You couldn’t redraw the “screen”, just reprint the command line every time you hit backspace. Which is also why CTRL-U and CTRL-W are commands that date back to teletype machines. Much quicker and cheaper to drop the entire input or a word and try again.
  - mech422 3y ago
    yeah - I worked on ASR-35 teletypes, with a punch tape reader/writer and an acoustic couple modem ... I thought they came much later though like mid 70s/80s?
    - hinkley 3y ago
      Which they? I did a deep dive on CTRL-U once when someone gave me a good breadcrumb to start with, and those control codes were way, way older than I suspected. SO + Wikipedia seem to think it was the ASR-33, which was originally 1963. I had this notion that it was about 5 years before that. But it's clear the ASR-32 does not have a CTRL or a SHIFT key, and I'm not sure who they could have possibly stolen the idea from. Reading a little more reminded me of another fact: the ASR33 was the first commercial use of the ASCII character format, which was developed in parallel.
      - mech422 3y ago
        I didn't realize the ASR series came that early... I didn't even know the ASR-32 existed!
        hinkley 3y ago
KaiserPro 3y ago
in the 60s time on the machine was really really expensive. You'd never code online as that would waste loads of time that could be sold to other people. So you would need to write out your program manually. You'd need to explain in clear english what you were doing and why. Then you'd transcribe into machine language (or an intermediary if you were using something fancy like assembly) you can see part of the process here: http://ict1301.co.uk/13010310.htm http://ict1301.co.uk/13010310.htm Then you'd put them onto card or tape, but that might be done by someone else. Typist were a specialised and often exclusively feminine profession, often seen as something not done by "programmers". byt the mid 60s though, it was much more common to have programmers type their own shit. Then once thats done, you'd deliver the media (card desk or paper tape, later on other things) to the operator, who would run the programme and return the results. You'd stack your programmes in queues. (hence where we get that name from)
- hinkley 3y ago
  In the 90’s some French coders were claiming that American coders were being made complacent by the instant gratification of workstation class computers and that our code quality was suffering. It was definitely suffering, and I found that thesis interesting, but I don’t think I ever agreed with it. It was a mismanagement problem not a workflow one.
- mech422 3y ago
  I actually started my career as a system operator for an old IBM 4341 and some Prime systems (couple with front panel toggles for IPL address :-) ). We were all mag-tape though, aside from the paper tape forms control on the IBM printer.
zoeysmithe 3y ago
I think it helps to remember that programming was "secretarial" work back then. Essentially, most programmers were women, and working from home meant they were also able to keep up their home duties and child-care. Back then you'd program in punch cards, so if you have the punch-card equipment you could do this near anywhere. So there wasn't a big difference between being at home or the office. It also allowed managers to hire low-wage women easier. It wasn't later that IT became a more profitable and less niche field that these women were pushed out and replaced with men. Programming stopped being 'pink collar' due to this dynamic. As far as modems go, we didnt really see that get big until the 1980s with speeds like 1200-2400 baud being groundbreakingly fast compared to 300 baud. You could receive or send text almost as fast as you could read it or type it, so it was not that different than using a green screen terminal at work or at university.
- pmontra 3y ago
  The cost of a 8 hours phone call would be huge, at least in my country. Of course if the company is paying for it, great! They would have to install a separate phone line not only to ease billing but also because you'd be unreachable all day long. I remember that the fixed costs were not negligible but again, if the company is paying for it out of the money they make selling your work, that's OK.
  - zoeysmithe 3y ago
    I think in the old, old days you'd do a batch job. So you'd connect, then upload/download at whatever baud speed was accepted. Your modem would only connect for x amount of minutes. Later, more 'always on' was possible. In the US, the phone system was setup in a way that local calls, defined by geographic rings based on switching stations, were 0 cents a minute after the initial first minute. So that allowed things like BBS culture to thrive.

saalweachter 3y ago

Before my time, but my understanding is that in ye olden days you'd write out your programs by hand, transcribe it to machine code on punch cards, and then submit the stack of cards for batch processing.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
mech422 3y ago
that's what I was guessing, but I wasn't sure ... I came in a bit after punch cards :-P
arrowsmith 3y ago
My uncle tells me that this is exactly how he would complete his programming assignments while getting his engineering degree back in the '70s.
com 3y ago
I remember when we could use an HB pencil for optical reader cards - no punch at home necessary!
- hinkley 3y ago
  My dad switched into IT in the late 80’s, via community college. So being a community college, they still had a machine that ran on card readers. As I recall they had a machine that took the “scantron” cards and spit out punched ones. And I don’t remember if they had it or I just read about it later, but someone did eventually invent a punchcard sorter. You had to number the cards, and then you could stuff a dropped deck into the machine and it would save your bacon.
- kragen 3y ago
  did you write software in this way i've only ever seen it for multiple-choice questions
  - com 3y ago
    Yep! Logo I recall.
kitd 3y ago
Code was usually written out by hand (and code-reviewed) first before being sent off for compilation. If there was no terminal at home, the first part of that could be done over fax/telephone.

jojobas 3y ago

Also wondering what was the nature of of this work in the first place. Hundreds of women familiar with assembly programming couldn't have appeared of thin air to go mentally execute their code and punch it into cards.

kragen 3y ago
maybe ibm wouldn't hire them back after they got married or had a baby
- jojobas 3y ago
  It was a booming market, why wouldn't they? I guess it was a possibility, but then it's a prime example of capitalism fixing/exploiting the pay gap.
  - mcv 3y ago
    Even as late as the 1970s, it was not uncommon for women to automatically get fired once they got married. Some jobs, like secretary, nurse or teacher, were deemed suitable for unmarried women, but married women had to stay home, raise kids, and run the household. This left a lot of highly capable women outside the workforce. A company specifically created to hire those women was a brilliant idea.
    - Amezarak 3y ago
      In the US the labor force participation rate in 1975 for women was 45%; today it is 57%. Was it really that much worse in the UK?
      - kragen 3y ago
        that 45% was to a significant extent poor women doing unskilled labor: maids, factory workers, cooks. not office workers however, shirley did not found her company 'freelance programmers' in 01975 she founded it in 01959 the ensuing 20 years were among the most successful years in history for feminism in the usa and uk, marked by, among other things, rapidly growing female participation in the labor force

ajb 3y ago

Initially that company didn't even have their own computer and mailed programs to a bureaux with a two day turnaround (I read previously on her website). So being in the office didn't noticeable speed things up. The bureaux was a third party, I think their clients didn't have a computer either but I don't know.

hinkley 3y ago
(bureaux is the plural form) I can barely comprehend a build-test-compile cycle that involved standing in line to use a machine. Sending them through the postal service is mind boggling. I don’t think anywhere near this many neurodivergent people could have worked in IT back then. It would have been too much.
- ajb 3y ago
  It would have required a different mindset, more like the degree of manual checking needed to write a mathematics paper. Plenty of mathematicians seem to be neurodivergent, but maybe not the kind of neurodivergence you are thinking of?
mech422 3y ago
oh thanks!

euroderf 3y ago

A Texas Instruments (IIRC) terminal with a telephone handset cradle and a thermal printer for output. So yes, the extreme terseness of "ed" and other Unix CLI utilities was a feature not a bug.

hinkley 3y ago
The earliest teletypes were practically ticker tape weren’t they? You couldn’t redraw the “screen”, just reprint the command line every time you hit backspace. Which is also why CTRL-U and CTRL-W are commands that date back to teletype machines. Much quicker and cheaper to drop the entire input or a word and try again.
- mech422 3y ago
  yeah - I worked on ASR-35 teletypes, with a punch tape reader/writer and an acoustic couple modem ... I thought they came much later though like mid 70s/80s?
  - hinkley 3y ago
    Which they? I did a deep dive on CTRL-U once when someone gave me a good breadcrumb to start with, and those control codes were way, way older than I suspected. SO + Wikipedia seem to think it was the ASR-33, which was originally 1963. I had this notion that it was about 5 years before that. But it's clear the ASR-32 does not have a CTRL or a SHIFT key, and I'm not sure who they could have possibly stolen the idea from. Reading a little more reminded me of another fact: the ASR33 was the first commercial use of the ASCII character format, which was developed in parallel.
    - mech422 3y ago
      I didn't realize the ASR series came that early... I didn't even know the ASR-32 existed!
      - hinkley 3y ago

KaiserPro 3y ago

in the 60s time on the machine was really really expensive. You'd never code online as that would waste loads of time that could be sold to other people. So you would need to write out your program manually. You'd need to explain in clear english what you were doing and why. Then you'd transcribe into machine language (or an intermediary if you were using something fancy like assembly) you can see part of the process here: http://ict1301.co.uk/13010310.htm http://ict1301.co.uk/13010310.htm Then you'd put them onto card or tape, but that might be done by someone else. Typist were a specialised and often exclusively feminine profession, often seen as something not done by "programmers". byt the mid 60s though, it was much more common to have programmers type their own shit. Then once thats done, you'd deliver the media (card desk or paper tape, later on other things) to the operator, who would run the programme and return the results. You'd stack your programmes in queues. (hence where we get that name from)

hinkley 3y ago
In the 90’s some French coders were claiming that American coders were being made complacent by the instant gratification of workstation class computers and that our code quality was suffering. It was definitely suffering, and I found that thesis interesting, but I don’t think I ever agreed with it. It was a mismanagement problem not a workflow one.
mech422 3y ago
I actually started my career as a system operator for an old IBM 4341 and some Prime systems (couple with front panel toggles for IPL address :-) ). We were all mag-tape though, aside from the paper tape forms control on the IBM printer.

zoeysmithe 3y ago

I think it helps to remember that programming was "secretarial" work back then. Essentially, most programmers were women, and working from home meant they were also able to keep up their home duties and child-care. Back then you'd program in punch cards, so if you have the punch-card equipment you could do this near anywhere. So there wasn't a big difference between being at home or the office. It also allowed managers to hire low-wage women easier. It wasn't later that IT became a more profitable and less niche field that these women were pushed out and replaced with men. Programming stopped being 'pink collar' due to this dynamic. As far as modems go, we didnt really see that get big until the 1980s with speeds like 1200-2400 baud being groundbreakingly fast compared to 300 baud. You could receive or send text almost as fast as you could read it or type it, so it was not that different than using a green screen terminal at work or at university.

pmontra 3y ago
The cost of a 8 hours phone call would be huge, at least in my country. Of course if the company is paying for it, great! They would have to install a separate phone line not only to ease billing but also because you'd be unreachable all day long. I remember that the fixed costs were not negligible but again, if the company is paying for it out of the money they make selling your work, that's OK.
- zoeysmithe 3y ago
  I think in the old, old days you'd do a batch job. So you'd connect, then upload/download at whatever baud speed was accepted. Your modem would only connect for x amount of minutes. Later, more 'always on' was possible. In the US, the phone system was setup in a way that local calls, defined by geographic rings based on switching stations, were 0 cents a minute after the initial first minute. So that allowed things like BBS culture to thrive.