My first encounter with a computer was when I was a Freshman on the campus of MSU in the spring of 1975. I took a computer programming class, which wasn't a mistake, self paced however, was. The language we used was Fortran and all of our instructions were in the form of punch cards.
The computer we used was a room-sized mainframe CDC-6500. You sat at the console and punched your cards with a device that resembled a typewriter.
This computer could run at a blistering 10 MHz. You would have to punch literally hundreds of cards to get the damn thing to return a message like, "hello world." Many hours were spent in the lab debugging the program. I flunked!
Flash forward to 2001 where I took a computer science strand at Aquinas College and worked with programming languages like C++, Visual Basic, and a little Java. You would have to write lines of code to get the damn thing to return a message like, "hello world." Many hours were spent in the lab debugging the program. I earned 3.8's.
I am now typing this on a fast IMac that compared to the CDC-6500 is a light-speed 2.6 GHz, or over two hundred times faster. Many hours are spent in the home office finding pictures of dogs wearing hats. I earn great marks!
:-)
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5 comments:
Great information! I really enjoyed reading your history.
Thanks for your comments regarding video-posting. another fellow classmate had another suggestion for video posting as well. I don't remember the name of it, but it is a comment on my blog. Thanks - I may need your expertise once I get time to actually try it.
Wow....great picture....very Willy Wonka and the Chocolate factory (the original of course!). I find this post interesting considering that my husband and I were just having a conversation the other day about how much things have changed just since we started college (I wasn't born until 1979 so it's been a bit longer for you:-).....I was reminiscing about actually having to go the the library on campus to look up information and about how our campus email was nothing but a black screen with green 8-bit looking font. Crazy how fast things change!!!!
Thanks for the interesting information!!
I, too, agree that this was interesting. I started on a manual typewriter and had my first encounter with a computer in the early 1980's. We have come a long way since those days! I still feel rather inept at all of this. I am beginning to feel the pressure.
I am only 26 and it amazing to see how technology has evolved since I was in elementary to high school and then college. I grew up using DOS to open programs and when Windows 3.1 and 95 came out I was blown away. It is amazing how fast and small everything is becoming! Thanks Moore's Law!
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