My early experience was very similar to yours coffee, my first introduction to programming was in 1976 via an RPGII programing class in college using punched cards. Had to write the program on a "coding sheet" then type out the program on the keypunch machine to create the program "deck". It was typical to draw a heavy, diagonal line across the top of the deck in case you dropped it as it was very hard to put the cards back in the correct order without that. Check out the data "deck" from the admin and place both "decks" in the card hopper to be read in. Once the cards were read, then had to wait 20 minutes or so for your results to spew out on the printer. First few times only garbage came out due to coding errors but eventually you got the thing to work correctly.
After that experience I didn't understand why anyone would ever want to be a programmer.
When I got my IBM PC in 1984 I decided to try again. Took a C programming class which was much more interesting than the RPGII class I had while in college. I ended up switching careers and have worked as a programmer/software engineer since then.
After that experience I didn't understand why anyone would ever want to be a programmer.
When I got my IBM PC in 1984 I decided to try again. Took a C programming class which was much more interesting than the RPGII class I had while in college. I ended up switching careers and have worked as a programmer/software engineer since then.
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