Re: I have a crisis


"Roedy Green" <my_email_is_posted_on_my_website@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in
message news:d4f2q11k5j63f1f324jj1mm1ahoc330t8u@xxxxxxxxxx
> On Thu, 15 Dec 2005 05:23:36 GMT, efriedNoSpam@xxxxxxxxx (EricF)
> wrote, quoted or indirectly quoted someone who said :
>
>>These kids have it easy. PCs, web, usenet. I remember trying to get my
>>homework done in the early 70's. Rode my horse to the computer center,
>>keypunched my code, submitted a card deck, and would come back 2 days
>>later
>>hoping I didn't I didn't have a typo or be off a column (Fortran). The
>>real
>>old timers probably had it worse. ;-)
>
> Paper tape was even more frustrating. You had to copy at about 10 CPS
> until the spot you wanted to change came up. If you were inattentive
> and overshot, you had to start over.
>
> And before that gold tipped wires and plugboards.
>
> That's as far back as I go.
>
> It seems impossibly irritating today, but at the time I was floating
> on air at the chance to play with computers and wear a white coat in
> the holy of holies computer room, something no other kid got to do. I
> felt like a child astronaut.
>
> The first time I touched a keypunch I was so excited I totally forgot
> all my instruction and soon cards were flying out the thing
> uncontrollably, like the sorceror's apprentice.meets Lucille Ball.
>
> I had access to the computer science library as student and later as a
> contract programmer for professors.. I felt as if I had gone to
> heaven. I read everything I could get my hands on even esoteric
> things like committee minutes of the deliberations to invent Ada.. It
> seems so odd students today seem to think of learning to write
> programs as a chore.

Ada! Ada! Prentice-Hall published my book
"Parallel Programming in ANSI Standard Ada"
in 1984. Poorest seller of all my books.

George W. Cherry

> Being a student with all the time you want to learn is SUCH a luxury.
> There has to be some way of helping students see their situation
> through their older eyes so they don't waste it.
>
>
> --
> Canadian Mind Products, Roedy Green.
> http://mindprod.com Java custom programming, consulting and coaching.


.

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