Folding Forum

Here's a redo of the earlier poll, expanded to provide more information in the results, and to be more inclusive.
Select your years of computer programming experience; no limits on languages. Anything from the smallest microprocessor to the largest mainframe counts; doesn't matter if it was built with vacuum tubes or .01 micron technology. Whether you programmed in binary with toggle switches or in a graphical language, it all counts.

lol 51-60

Could anybody who truthfully picks the 61+ option please post his/her resume here as well? It appears we have a living legend in the community.

proteneer wrote:lol 51-60

Why not - GreyWhiskers started in 1963, which is awfully close to 50, and Joe_H has 205 years experience (viewtopic.php?p=230287#p230287), so there may be people in between.

Punchy wrote:

proteneer wrote:lol 51-60

Why not - GreyWhiskers started in 1963, which is awfully close to 50, and Joe_H has 205 years experience (viewtopic.php?p=230287#p230287), so there may be people in between.

Oooops, was in the middle of typing 20-25 and changed my mind, missed deleting the one character. First programming was on punch cards over 40 years ago.

First time I got to write any code was on punch tape, back in 1973.

All of my school programming at Maryland and Illinois and all of my early work experience in the 60s and early 70s was with punch cards - until I got to work on the Burroughs 5500 on the Illiac IV project - bliss using a terminal and getting instant turn around.

Early on (say 1967-ish), I programmed the CDC 160A - first writing a very short typewriter reader and paper tape puncher/loader program in assembler by flipping the 1/0 register switches on the console. Punched the loader program on paper tape - then wrote more programs using the typewriter on the console - again punching the program on paper tape - then wrote more ambitious programs to read magnetic tape. Fun.

Then writing programs in Applesoft Basic then Apple 2 assembler for the Franklin Ace 1000 Apple 2 clone I got in 1982. Saving programs to the 5 1/4" floppy disks.

Quite impressive GreyWhiskers

I was hoping one of the 51+ is Donald Knuth lurking

Ah, yes. I remember well taking a CS class at Illinois in 1969 using Knuth's Fundamental Algorithms book shortly after it came out. Still remember the MIX computer and the exercises based on Knuth's observation of one of the elevator systems at Stanford.

GreyWhiskers wrote:Ah, yes. I remember well taking a CS class at Illinois in 1969 using Knuth's Fundamental Algorithms book shortly after it came out. Still remember the MIX computer and the exercises based on Knuth's observation of one of the elevator systems at Stanford.

Wow. I had an exam today in my operating systems class and there were questions about the algorithms used for organizing the read/write requests to a hard drive, which is basically the same thing as an elevator algorithm. Better to keep moving up the floors/cylinders, servicing all the requests, and then turn around the other way and service the other requests going the other direction. This is the LOOK algorithm.

I had no idea that people here had this much experience. Quite impressive.

My mother pulled wires to program a computer during WW II, (stored programs came later) she did not decide what wires to move, she just did the plugging and unplugging. (Once the war was over she was fired, and replaced by a man) By contrast, my father did not start programming until 1957. (assembly language) 1942 to 2012 is 70 years, 1957 to 2012 is 55 years.

(the last computer I worked on with wired programs was an NCR in 1969) When they got the chance, they bought the 44th Apple ][ made. (You could save your programs on cassette tape!) The first computer I owned personally was a S-100 CP/M Northstar Horizon with a walnut case, it had a 6 pass Pascal compiler that could comple Hello World in 30 minutes.

I'm 28 now, and started early on programming. My age group was a really great time to get started if you were enthusiastic. I had computers in pretty much all of my growing up life, and started using BASIC at probably the age of 11 or so. I was able to get some older computers (commodore 64) at Salvation Army when I was young to experiment too. The amount of tools for learning and programming in high level languages in my teens definitely made programming fun.

next year

I started in 1976, with a Motorola MEK6800D2 kit, Hex keypad, LED display, cassette tape interface using the Kansas City standard to save and load programs. I still have that system today.

Ahhh ... the Good Old Days!

Edit:
Hold on, I forgot that in grade 9 (1967-68), the top math students (myself included) got to write FORTRAN programs (which were keypunched onto Hollerith cards) and run on the IBM 360 computer at the local university (UBC). And we also got to tour the DEC facility in Vancouver. They (DEC) even brought a PDP-8 to our school and we got to write small programs on it. So that puts me at the 45-year level.