My 50th Anniversary

No, I have been married only 48.5 years. About this time of year in 1968 I wrote my first computer program. The language was PL/1. I have detailed my start elsewhere on this board so I shall not repeat it here (https://www.b4x.com/android/forum/t...e-computers-personal.40688/page-2#post-244611).

I still have the textbook from my PL/1 course and tucked inside is one of the quizzes from that class. I thought that those of you with ancient ties to PL/1 might be interested in the quiz which you can download from www.dlfallen.altervista.org/Files/PL1_Test.pdf. I am not proud of my performance on it, but I did get better!

What system was that on, was it a shared time mainframe? Was it using punch cards?

andymc said:

What system was that on, was it a shared time mainframe? Was it using punch cards?

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It was on an IBM 360/40, one of only 3 at the time. It was donated by IBM with the stipulation that students had top priority. The administration could only use the computer in the wee hours of the morning. Most computing was on punchcards, but there was a time sharing capability with IBM selectric typewriters used for I/O.

For my graduate assistantship, instead of teaching or research I wrote 35 interactive statistical programs which gave students and faculty the ability to walk into the time share room and analyize their data quickly. I used BASIC for this because it was the only language the University had that would do matrix algebra. This all paid an unexpected dividend when I took the 4 hour Statistics competency exam. The graduare committee decided that because I authored the programs, the programs were an extension of myself and allowed me to use the computer during the exam. I was done in 15 minutes.

dlfallen said:

About this time of year in 1968 I wrote my first computer program

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About this time my Dad had Sex with my Mother so i was born in December ´68