Path: csiph.com!eternal-september.org!reader02.eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: Ben Bacarisse Newsgroups: comp.programming Subject: Re: Why here are so few people nowdays ? Date: Sat, 06 Feb 2021 00:21:16 +0000 Organization: A noiseless patient Spider Lines: 31 Message-ID: <877dnmm4g3.fsf@bsb.me.uk> References: <17eb81f0-39dd-4387-8362-3a4c00d4cf6an@googlegroups.com> <87eehvj1ys.fsf@bsb.me.uk> <86k0rmxvmx.fsf@example.com> <87czxemea0.fsf@bsb.me.uk> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain Injection-Info: reader02.eternal-september.org; posting-host="36c3a65e761c37767e05da026f8de7ed"; logging-data="19670"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@eternal-september.org"; posting-account="U2FsdGVkX19luCCJAjSlGrVE8pf9lLU8S6Oy7ZIcrSw=" Cancel-Lock: sha1:xggnJQAygjR2N1mLvHF3ZOB1KPU= sha1:OGivkmuyZD0/Lk/5CQSlzyysmV8= X-BSB-Auth: 1.370060ec9fb3188bf553.20210206002116GMT.877dnmm4g3.fsf@bsb.me.uk Xref: csiph.com comp.programming:12075 Peter writes: > Ben Bacarisse wrote: >> Boris Dorestand writes: >> >>>> A group can sometimes be revived simply by posting a question people >>>> find interesting. There are many more people monitoring this group than >>>> you think. >>> >>> I'm happy to see that. I hope young people are here too; sometimes I >>> get a bit concerned about the future of the USENET. Sometimes I get the >>> feeling that the many more people here are all old-timers. >> >> Definite old-timer here. If you've used any digital medium with holes >> in it (for serious work) then you are definitely an old-timer! > > My introduction to computing involved punching cards to feed into a > English Electric KDF9 front end to an ICL 1904 (or 6, I've > forgotten). But I doubt that it counted as serious work 'cuz it was > student exercises of which I recall only one: write a PLAN (the > assembly language) program to print the Fibonacci sequence. Students do serious work! I briefly worked for ICL so I know PLAN, but I never used anything with holes in it at ICL. But before going to university I worked as a programmer on am IBM 360. It did have a few terminals for interactive work, but they were operated only in the afternoons and I rarely used those. The rest of the time it ran punched card jobs. -- Ben.