Looking for a defined path to learn Rev (for new users)

Francis Nugent Dixon effendi at wanadoo.fr
Fri Nov 20 09:32:36 EST 2009


Hi from Paris,

Stephen Barncard sent :

> If one has ever had to work with punched cards
> (and I have not) genuinely
> deserves the title "hard core".

Not only did I work with punched cards (and I think
there are more of you out there), but when the IBM026
and 029 card punches were not yet available, we used
the Hollerith key punch to punch our cards by hand.

Thems were the good old days, when (if I remember
correctly, the left bracket was 12-0-1-8-9, that is
5 holes in the same column. Needless to say, we often
made mistakes, but it took so long to punch a card, that
we used to stick the confetti back in the holes, and then
correct the cards. Obviously, after feeding the cards
through the reader, a few times, the wire brushes often
knocked out the confetti, and we got a "reader check".
Then we had to examine the card and decide what hole the
confetti had fallen out of !!

And my VERY FIRST program on the IBM 1401 involved punching
up the whole program in machine code, including the bootstrap.
If you have never punched the command "Set character to word mark",
you have never really lived    .....     :>)

Oh my God - Am I that old ?

-Francis

"Nothing should ever be done for the first time - but it often was !"





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