Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
macOS Age of Programmers
- Thread starter Duke Leto
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Ah, the memories.Remember how you could delete or insert characters when you "duped" the card, if you held the card down so it didn't move while you duped it?
How about the guy who dropped his card deck with the source to a program, and then had to put all of the cards back in order.
That's awesome. Congrats on the 20 years!
Yes it did.
Yep. Did you ever take an old tape and roll it out a bit and then dust it with white magnetic powder so you could see the actual bits? Way cool.While we are on the subject of nostalgia, anyone else ever play "ring-toss" with the write-rings from 9 Track tapes? I still have a drawer full of those too.
The Commodore 64 was a nice computer. And a big step up from the VIC20 if memory serves.
The Uniquack. Neat mainframe.
Wasn't the word length on it something like 69 bits (8 bytes plus 5 Hamming bits).
Senpai! Bows deeply.
That was a nice calculator. Did some development for a buddy with it. He needed to use the Sire equation for speaker design. Audiophile type fellow.
So true.
Reminds me of the F-16 flight controls when it first came out. They didn't move, only pressure sensitive. The engineers and programmers thought that this setup would result in better control inputs. The test pilots after trying it out, sent them back the drawing boards to redesign the flight control system so it would give feedback.
Good book.
Worked with a variety of languages over the years. One of the more interesting ones was Ada. As you can see from the attached picture, our reference manual was in the proposed state and not finalized.
Attachments
It was a bad joke... The HP41C had, as an accessory, a card reader that you attached to the top of the calculator. You could then record any programs you had developed for your calculator, that were in the internal memory, onto little plastic (magnetic) cards that you inserted into the card reader. After that you could attach the card reader to a friend's calculator and record the program in question so that he/she could use it in the exam.
Since in a Mac simulator you wouldn't have a physical HP41C to attach to, maybe if you had a card reader with a USB cable you could recreate all the fun of recording a few bytes onto little plastic cards... (terrible, isn't it)
By the way, I agree with Sushi, the HP41C was a great calculator.
Ah, I used to love the TRS-80. It sat next to my Mac Plus, my Commodore-64 and my TI99-4A. Those were the days.
Oh, and I'm 32.
The Trash 80 was a fun computer to work on. It's been a while, but I remember enjoying using it.
One of the funniest computer names that I worked on, was the Krapple II. This was the nickname given to the Korean made Apple IIs. These were black market items, and were selling like hotcakes during the day due to them being about half price or less than a real Apple II. It was very hard to tell the difference on a good version, between a real Apple II and a Krapple II.
So why is that that 50% of developers are 19-25? Why such a large drop off after 25? Is it because you all get out of school, work for the man a few years and then realize that there's really no money in development and then go out and get another job?
Don't forget that what you are seeing is the subset of Programmers who read the MacRumors Forums...
While I am one of the few in the 46+ group, I have a feeling that the average age of MacRumors Forum posters is much younger overall...probably in that 19-25 age group...
I'm in (though quickly exiting) the 19-25 group, but I certainly have no intention of getting out of programming anytime soon. I definitely think that this is just bias in the pool that took the survey. I'm one of the youngest developers at my company. The top of the curve would probably be mid-thirties here.
I would actually say that a lot of people may, between 35-45 move out of programming professionally into technical managerial positions. I doubt they stop coding in their spare time (if they liked coding in the first place). This is just an observation based on personal experience, though, many may continue coding until retirement elsewhere. I know there are some people that will not enter management, and want to keep coding, so it wouldn't surprise me.
-Lee
I am 30 now and work mostly with Mathematica, SAS and MatLab. I work in Finance, but I have also used C/C++ and do use Objective-C for "hobbying".
While I am not a computer science grad or engineer I have been around computers since looong before I can remember... ok, I do remember that my first exposure was to an Atari 2600 (video game system) at home, and then my school when I was in first or second grade bought Apple IIs. Imagine my glee when one of the professors opened the case! I had seen integrated circuits before in my Atari cartridges but never so many on a single board!
And I would spend long hours playing karateka and trying to beat the eagle! Sadly I never made it to the princess...
But after a while one of our professors told us to try "logo" instead, and that was really the first time that I did some programming. It is incredible what a little encouragement from an adult can do. I learned how to give instructions in a logical and ordered fashion. It seemed all pretty natural to me. And the "turtle" was a nice concept anyway
After this I was fortunate enough that my parents bought me an MS-DOS Acer Pee Cee, and even though graphics sucked it was fun to fool around with mostly BASIC. I was kind of upset by the limited capabilities of Basic and wanted to learn C but I couldn't afford any compilers :-( oh well... I guess things do come to those who wait!
So now, I do try to keep up to date with Objective-C and it is fun to see all the latest developments! and I could finally afford one of those 8-core mac pros! It is incredible to me that the mac pro has 8 more processors that run at 3Ghz as opposed to the 4Mhz or so of my original PC. And don't get me started on hard disks and memory! My original PC had 512Kb of RAM and NO Hard disks, just two double sided diskette drives... oh man! Well, at least the kid inside me is happy as hell!
My hat is off to all those that used punch cards! There is no school like old school!
M.
While I am not a computer science grad or engineer I have been around computers since looong before I can remember... ok, I do remember that my first exposure was to an Atari 2600 (video game system
) at home, and then my school when I was in first or second grade bought Apple IIs. Imagine my glee when one of the professors opened the case! I had seen integrated circuits before in my Atari cartridges but never so many on a single board! And I would spend long hours playing karateka and trying to beat the eagle! Sadly I never made it to the princess...
But after a while one of our professors told us to try "logo" instead, and that was really the first time that I did some programming. It is incredible what a little encouragement from an adult can do. I learned how to give instructions in a logical and ordered fashion. It seemed all pretty natural to me. And the "turtle" was a nice concept anyway
After this I was fortunate enough that my parents bought me an MS-DOS Acer Pee Cee, and even though graphics sucked it was fun to fool around with mostly BASIC. I was kind of upset by the limited capabilities of Basic and wanted to learn C but I couldn't afford any compilers :-( oh well... I guess things do come to those who wait!
So now, I do try to keep up to date with Objective-C and it is fun to see all the latest developments! and I could finally afford one of those 8-core mac pros! It is incredible to me that the mac pro has 8 more processors that run at 3Ghz as opposed to the 4Mhz or so of my original PC. And don't get me started on hard disks and memory! My original PC had 512Kb of RAM and NO Hard disks, just two double sided diskette drives... oh man! Well, at least the kid inside me is happy as hell!
My hat is off to all those that used punch cards! There is no school like old school!
M.
32 here. Started programming on my cousin's Commodore 64 when I would go for a visit. I had a friend with a TRS-80, but he moved so I never got to try programming on it.
I didn't have a computer of my own until after high school. In HS I used to program my TI-85 for my math classes. I even managed to teach it to play chess.
After HS I managed to get an old 286 and fumbled my way through MS-DOS. When I started college for a Computer Science degree, my mom decided to buy a newfangled Windows 95 PC.
I never did get a degree involving programming. I only do it as a hobby now. I love C/C++, learned some Java and Python, fun stuff.
My mom is 62 and was a programmer in the 70s. She liked to talk about punch cards and COBOL and FORTRAN. After not touching a computer for over 20 years, she was confounded and then astounded by a GUI and mouse. I should buy her an iMac.
I didn't have a computer of my own until after high school. In HS I used to program my TI-85 for my math classes. I even managed to teach it to play chess.
After HS I managed to get an old 286 and fumbled my way through MS-DOS. When I started college for a Computer Science degree, my mom decided to buy a newfangled Windows 95 PC.
I never did get a degree involving programming. I only do it as a hobby now. I love C/C++, learned some Java and Python, fun stuff.
My mom is 62 and was a programmer in the 70s. She liked to talk about punch cards and COBOL and FORTRAN. After not touching a computer for over 20 years, she was confounded and then astounded by a GUI and mouse. I should buy her an iMac.
34 here. Did a bit of playing around with commodore 64 (basic) and ms-dos (turbo pascal), but no serious programming. Most of the proper stuff I've coded is numerical analysis in matlab, but now I've finally joined the grown-ups and started writing my code in fortran 90.
Cool!
I started with punch cards. Still have a couple that I made over 30 years ago like this one.
I think I read about those in my Information Science textbook.
