J. Baker wrote:My grandma use to have to use the Fortran punch cards. One error and you have to retype everything.
Actually, it wasn't quite that bad. Each line of source code was punched on a single card, so a coding error only required one card to be re-punched. The tedious part of programming was hand-writing the program onto pre-printed coding sheets, that were then transcribed by keypunch operators onto punched cards.
Two true stories about punched cards from my mainframe days:
The first from my time as the IBM guru at Sears (the department store) Head Office in Toronto. A newly hired keypunch operator, anxious to please, "corrected" the spelling on one day's production of Assembler coding sheets. The following morning, after the overnight compiler run, each of the programmers was faced with a huge compiler printout that needed "debugging".
The second involved an accountant - an over-the-counter customer at a service bureau I worked at. All his programs and data were on punched cards, which he stored in boxes in the trunk of his car. One unfortunate day he was rear-ended, and his entire "computer department" exploded into a cloud of punched cards that rained down over the freeway. Amazingly, within a couple of weeks he had restored his card decks, and went back to driving them around in his car.
For ten years Caesar ruled with an iron hand, then with a wooden foot, and finally with a piece of string.
~ Spike Milligan
), sometime mid-1970-ies.
