[PLUG] Joy++

Dick Steffens dick at dicksteffens.com
Thu Sep 15 00:27:30 UTC 2016


On 09/14/2016 04:56 PM, Frank Filz wrote:

> My first program was written in Basic for an HP 2100A using 80 column 
> cards
> that were marked with #2 pencil instead of punching. Well, unless it was RPN
> programming in an early HP programmable calculator, I forget which came
> first.
>
> I have done punched cards (in college).
>
> I have flipped front panel switches (on a Heathkit).
>
> I have loaded paper tape (the HP 2100A could also do paper tape).
>
> I have written assembler code on paper (calculating branch relative offsets
> by hand) and then typed it into an Apple II's monitor.

First program: FORTRAN on punch cards in college.
Some COBOL, as a personal exercise on a PDP-10 at the place I worked in 
the late '70s.
Some PL/1 at Boston University.

Then I got serious and wrote a program to schedule garbage trucks on a 
North Star Horizon using North Star Basic. I also wrote a program to 
track how may reps of which exercise was done by each of the players on 
Tom Landry's Dallas Cowboys team. (No, I didn't manage to land that job 
directly. I did it for a friend who sold North Star Horizons and a 
strain gauge to the Cowboys to record something about their motion. It 
was some kind of table they'd stand on and throw from.)

Then on to CP/M and Turbo Pascal in the '80s on a machine with an 
enormous 5 Megabyte hard drive!

-- 
Regards,

Dick Steffens




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