May You Live In Interesting Times

[Boon Mee]

May You Live In Interesting Times.... is a good piece from an old IT hand.

Makes you wonder...

[cdnvic]

I love those stories... can't believe how far we've come in such a short time. Here's a few more interesting sites related to this:

ISOC Internet History

http://www.isoc.org/internet/history/

The Obsolete Computer Museum

http://www.obsoletecomputermuseum.org/

cv

[ZOVOX]

May You Live In Interesting Times.... is a good piece from an old IT hand.

Makes you wonder...

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Remember those early days well ! i was only in my early teens and was programming in basic on a Nascom 2 machine, which i had to put together as it came in kit form, and had only 3k in memory. Also, recording your crappy programs on audio tape ....... Ah! those were the days.

[chonabot]

21 years back I was writing code for ICL Mainframes ( DME G2) , these days it's Unix , but there's still a s39 VME Mainframe kicking around downstairs.

Plus le change , Plus c'est la meme chose....

[francois]

hi'

Plus le change , Plus c'est la meme chose....

loved this one Chon

francois

[chingy_]

21 years back I was writing code for ICL Mainframes ( DME G2) , these days it's Unix , but there's still a s39 VME Mainframe kicking around downstairs.

Plus le change , Plus c'est la meme chose....

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

21 years back i was still plying with my ATARI, and G.I Joe.

[RDN]

.... recording your crappy programs on audio tape ....... Ah! those were the days.

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Audio tape!! What a luxury

In 1976 I had this huge cardboard box into which the output from the paper tape reader would fall. After loading the paper tape assembler, I had to load my paper tape program and collect the paper tape object code for feeding back in. And if you got a tape jam.... %^&$^*&$-ing h3ll. Start again! It used to take 8 hours to make even the simplest of changes to the program. On the positive side, justifying the purchase of twin floppy disk drives (8 inch variety) was extremely easy .

Kids today, eh?! They don't know how .....blah ....blah....

Edited January 11, 2005 by RDN

[chonabot]

.... recording your crappy programs on audio tape ....... Ah! those were the days.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Audio tape!! What a luxury

In 1976 I had this huge cardboard box into which the output from the paper tape reader would fall. After loading the paper tape assembler, I had to load my paper tape program and collect the paper tape object code for feeding back in. And if you got a tape jam.... %^&$^*&$-ing h3ll. Start again! It used to take 8 hours to make even the simplest of changes to the program. On the positive side, justifying the purchase of twin floppy disk drives (8 inch variety) was extremely easy .

Kids today, eh?! They don't know how .....blah ....blah....

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Sounds like paradise to me

[chonabot]

hi'

Plus le change , Plus c'est la meme chose....

loved this one Chon

francois

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You're Welcome Francois! To be honest I can parlez a bit of your lingo , but I got this gem some 20 years back from a RUSH track - " Circumstances"

It's true though , on Occasion your language captures the moment more so than even the Mother tongue of Bill.S , n'est Pas?

Edited January 11, 2005 by chonabot

[chonabot]

21 years back I was writing code for ICL Mainframes ( DME G2) , these days it's Unix , but there's still a s39 VME Mainframe kicking around downstairs.

Plus le change , Plus c'est la meme chose....

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

21 years back i was still plying with my ATARI, and G.I Joe.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Moi Aussi Chingy , I'm just a few days/weeks over 39 today , but at 18 I was a Whizz kid on anything IT related.

I bet my High score on Asteroids/BattleZone/Space Invaders would impress thee.

[astral]

I was online back in 1973 with a DEC System 10, using a teletype and a very slow modem. Progammes could be prepunched on tape to save downloading time.

Languages were BASIC and Fortran.

We had Lunar Lander programme for fun.

It was a great step up from the Elliot 803 we had a college in 1966.

The machine has a whole 8K of memory and the ALGOL complier took up half that.

No OS as such in those days.

Programmes had to be submitted on paper tape. Usually they came back with errors, the next day and had to be corrected.

A painful process. I soon lost interest.

[Darknight]

Scary how quick things change.

5 years ago i knew Dos, windows 95, Nt4, Novell, some unix, mailservers ect

3 years ago i had to trow out novell and unix and specialized only on Microsoft and Citrix

Now 5 years later you need to specialize further and further because simply the volume of systems have increased dramatically.

Now i'm specialized in Active Directory 2003, Security, Gpmc. You can't even know everything about microsoft anymore. Just need to chose your intrests.

Wonder were it all will be going.