Re: Why "Hello World" as a first exercise?

[Dennis Lee Bieber <wlfraed@ix.netcom.com>]

On Fri, 30 Jul 2021 18:06:21 -0500, "Randy Brukardt" <randy@rrsoftware.com>
declaimed the following:


>My first actual programming class spent the first two or three sessions on 
>the administrative things: where is the computer center? How do you use a 
>keypunch? (I admittedly am showing my age here; but at least we were the 
>second last semester to use the keypunches.) How to submit a card deck? What 
>magic incantations are needed to get the computer to accept a card desk? 
>Where to find your results afterwards (this being a batch system)? Etc. The 
>actual program was very secondary to all of that (I don't remember what it 
>was, but we had to key it and submit the results -- in order to prove that 
>we understood all of the admistrivia).
>
	Sounds like my college... Here are the three 029 keypunches... Here's
how to program a drum card to simplify entering code... Here's the minimum
JCL to run FORTRAN(-IV) (Sigma CP/V had two FORTRAN compilers -- the
traditional compiler outputting a relocatable object [ROM] file, to be
followed by a linker outputting a load module [commonly called a LMN file];
the OS didn't use file extensions, so our practice was to name the source
S:xxx, object O:xxx, executable L:xxx. The other compiler was FLAG --
FORTRAN Load And Go -- compile/link/execute with one invocation). Turn in
the card deck to the operators, here. Come back later to pick up your
printed output.

	It wasn't until my second year that we were given access to the
Hazeltine terminals, along with accounts that had some modicum of disk
storage associated with them. The BASIC class got something like 30
"granules" -- about 15kB; others got 100-200 "granules".

	CP/V somehow combined time-share (we had something like 50 terminals
scattered over campus and a few high schools with dial-up lines), Batch
Processing, and (not of use to a college installation) supposedly
/real-time/ operations.




-- 
	Wulfraed                 Dennis Lee Bieber         AF6VN
	wlfraed@ix.netcom.com    http://wlfraed.microdiversity.freeddns.org/