One-a-Day-Compiles: Good Enough For Government Work In 1983

theodp (442580) writes "Simon Allardice takes a stroll down coding memory lane, recalling that when he got started in programming in 1983, hand-writing one's programs with pencil on IBM coding sheets was still considered good enough for British government work (COBOL, Assembler forms). Allardice writes, 'And when you were finished handwriting a section of code — perhaps a full program, perhaps a subroutine — you'd gather these sheets together (carefully numbered in sequence, of course) and send them along to the folks in the data entry department. They'd type it in. And the next day you'd get a report to find out if it compiled or not. Let me say that again: the next day you could find out if your code compiled or not.' So, does anyone have 'fond' memories of computer programming in the punched card era? And for you young'uns, what do you suppose your C++ or Java development times would be like if you got one compile a day?" The other way you could program in 1983.

ah, those were the daze;-)

[airdrummer]

i started on punchcards in college on a cdc mainframe: drop the deck in the tray outside the machine room, operator periodically runs them, puts the output in the out tray, hours later...

i improved my turnaround by dating 1 of the operators;-)

/android $make

[pushing-robot]

Let me say that again: the next day you could find out if your code compiled or not.

So not much has changed, then.