Continuous Reboots Plague Windows XP SP3 Users

Paul Knudsen wrote:
>
> On Mon, 26 May 2008 08:43:33 -0400, Ogden Johnson III
> <oj3usmc@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> >Using them was easy (unless you dropped the deck), keypunching
> >them was a [series of colorful and imaginative expletives
> >deleted].
>
> Well, we did have key-punchers. So "all" we had to do was write stuff
> letter-by-letter. Of course it was a crappy job and they'd make a lot
> of mistakes.

Key punching went through a verifier, who repunched everything,
except her machine put a notch in the card if it didn't match
what was there. Those cards got repunched.

Programmers very quickly found that turnaround is a lot faster if you
punch your own cards, and so programmers could be found queued up for
the keypunch machines meant for quick changes.

They were banned from the official keypunch machines of course, because
the plan is for the keypunch girls to punch your work.

Slowly the idea dawned that if you put in more keypunch machines, and remove
keypunch girls, it might actually meet the demand better.

They went with stand-up keypunch machines, though, so people wouldn't come
and punch out whole pages and pages of code themselves.

Everybody did anyway.

Then came time sharing and you punched your own stuff without cards.
Programmers who had always punched their own stuff were great typists
by that point already.
--
rhhardin@mindspring.com

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