(old)Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

This got me thinking. When did programming (in high level language) start. As I recall there was a FORTRAN standard FORTRAN66 which presumably relates to 1966. Not sure about COBOL.

There must be a limit on age in Programmer Years (in high level language at least).

Me - I'm 60.

My school, which I finished in 1970, did not have ANY computers or calculators. Slide rules and logarithms were the technology of the classroom! I had some time to kill so used a book to teach myself FORTRAN before going to University later in the year, where I did it properly. These were the days of submitting programs on punched cards and waiting overnight to see if it ran! Getting syntax errors was extremely annoying and caused a delay of a day in running a program so we took more care in those days.

Puppyluvr asks us to remember when the 5 1/4 floppy was such an amazing improvement over the old 8 inch format.. My first Hard Disk was 10 mb, and I was awestruck..

He must be young! I've already mentioned punch cards and then came cassette tape on the first home computers. Hards disks? they were but a twinkle in the eye! I paid £180 to expand my Commodore PET with 8K of static RAM. A twin 5-1/4" floppy came later at £540.

Earlier this year I paid £8 to get an 8GB USB stick.

My computing history?

FORTRAN on an ICL190x mainframe (education and work)
IBM360 (work)
Commodore PET - Commodore 64/SX64 - Commodore Amiga (Home)
CP/M based machine (work)
IBM compatible PC (work and home) in increasing size and power over the years.

The computer thinks I am this old:

111010

-- or --

3A

I'm not surprised that there's an almost bimodal distribution of ages on this forum. This group isn't like the poll about "who uses Ubuntu"' which might be skewed to a younger more casual crowd. Nobody adapts Ubuntu. You just download it and use it. Whereas puppy is incredibly adaptable, designed deliberately to be adapted by people with different levels of expertise, from simple remastering all the way to building whole new versions from the ground up using woof. Theres a place for everyone here. It's a real community, where real enthusiasts spend a LOT of time working on their own versions, making pets, building kernels, figuring out printing, or wireless, or helping newcomers.

So who's got the free time to spend doing all that? Some young people, with their youthful energy and relatively free schedules (although they're probably neglecting their studies somewhat). Some younger singles, without family obligations, although sometimes they get busy with their jobs. ( jemimah works like a superhuman person when her job isn't busy, but even she has to pull back when it is). Who really has the time - frankly it's going to be retired people, or people who're between jobs. Bless them, that they spend that free time working for the benefit of this community.

People in between, with kids and spouses and jobs and parents, can't always devote as much time.

Eight Kilobytes to Twelve gigabytes! One meg disk to Terabytes drives. Anyone play or program on an IBM 1130 computer? Eight K.. well actually a sixteen bit word, so by today's terms two bytes per word. Engineering major, was told to take a FORTRAN class, copied the first three programs, was so lost. By the end of the semester, I was playing from eight in the morning till after the janitor left. Following year in 1969 I was programming Payrolls, registration systems, grading systems, all on the 8 K machine. Size of your couch.

Cost was fifty thousand for an additional 8K of core memory. Just added 8 Gig of memory to my new laptop, so now have 12 GB, for forty dollars.

World goes around. One of the neat parts of the 1130 world was COMMON and other USER groups for folks to share programs and ideas. Then bigger systems became the norm. Fewer user groups. BBS's became a bit popular....and finally PUPPY and the Forum... folks like to share and contribute. For me puppy is fun, useful as well. Sixty-Six a few days ago.

Question was asked when higher level languages became popular. I would say mid Sixties. I programmed the 1130 in assembler a bit, mostly in FORTRAN and RPG. I took a COBOL class taught by an IBM instructor at the Junior Collage, COBOL was the popular language for Business and FORTRAN for engineering. A Few other flavors were used as well. That was the age of the IBM 360.

Much faster to program in higher level languages. First database was on the 1130, most of my programming today is in MS Database. Yes still programming commercial applications, in my spare time. Machines change, requirements change, but lots of companies still are manual or semi manual. Bet can be programming the same applications when I am 90! Currently programming an application I programmed similar twenty five years ago.

49 and as the kids are finishing college, just starting life.

8-bit wrote:If you really have to know, figure it out for yourself.
I was born in 1947.

Really a very good method: Compute age from date of birth (1948)

Who had 8 kiloBytes?
1 k : http://www.reghardware.com/2012/04/24/r ... week_wrap/

I voted (?) back in 2009, thought I'd check to see how the results are going, but I can't see them. Have they disappeared?

L18L wrote:

8-bit wrote:If you really have to know, figure it out for yourself.
I was born in 1947.

Really a very good method: Compute age from date of birth (1948)

Who had 8 kiloBytes?
1 k : http://www.reghardware.com/2012/04/24/r ... week_wrap/

My Timex Sinclair has 8 kilobytes

really I am under 50, but have had an eventful life, always acted older but looked younger, was carded for alcohol till mid 30s. And was harassed by other teachers for blending in to much with my first teaching job, many times told to leave teacher lounge. had to grow facial hair to appear older.

But some posters surprise me by their mature posts ( like pizzagood and bark^3 ) and others post like middle school, but are 28 til mid year Wink no names lol.

Maybe we should start up another poll again. That way all under 50 year olds can retain their anonymity but we can still satisfy our (my) curiosity if the forum's age average has shifted.

I'm 51 year old. I have a wife: no sons. I'm retired or a rentier: I worked in a familiar enterprise now closed. I'm not rich: I spend my time reading about "living off the grid", "de-growth", "climate-change" and so on. I love puppy and I'm happy to spend some time writing in the forum even though I have not programming skills. I learned a lot using the work of skilled men who dedicated much time to open source projects: every user should consider to give something back to the community if they can.

Looking at today's forum posts this thread caught my eye.
I was curious.
I started reading pg.11, then 10, then jumped to 1 and continued to the end again.

To read through the posts is interesting as well as surprising ...or perhaps not?

I discovered Puppy with 3.01 when I was looking to get away from bloat.
Today I am still fascinated by its concept of compactness and usability and when possible I try to make people "see the light" and use Puppy too.

Now that the thread has been revived, perhaps the original poll can be revived too.
Why should the under 50's want to be anonymous as regards to their age?
No need, battleshooter, you pull your weight well above your tender years

My self, I am 70.

I think a poll would be good.
I am 33. A daughter has just joined the family, increasing its size by 50% (in discrete quantities).

As of this post, I am 17.

Hah, busted. I actually forgot I've posted on this thread before.

New poll for 2015 here.

When I started work it was on an IBM 1130 expanded to 32k.
I started to teach myself Fortran iv but rapidly switched to PL/1
The company built machine tools and the controls systems for them. I remember working on the machines that made parts for Concorde.
When I left there I went to Rolls Royce and worked on the programs that helped design the engines that powered Concorde.

I am 68, December 1946. Used a slide rule, batteries not required, in in high school Mathematics class or brain power and scratches on paper. Even in the Navy used pre-calculated tables or a slide rule, 1965-1969. Able to afford a PC in 1978, <personal computer used loosely>, the Tandy Radio Shack 80 Model I 4k with cassette play to record BASIC programs. Upgraded to the Commodore C64, what many called the toy computer, but it danced circles around TRS 80.

MU wrote:42. Old enough that I start feeling the first physical limitations.
When I try to grab something behind me, and turn around too fast, my shoulders get in terrible pain.

Mark,
Supplementation with Coral Calcium may fix your shoulder pain. In my case, my range of motion of the arms and shoulders was down to about 40%. For example, I could not reach into my back pocket to retrieve my wallet without experiencing acute tindonitis in the shoulders. After a month of twice daily Coral Calcium, my range of motion had improved to about 60%. In two months time, I had improved to 80%. After four months, I had recovered 95% my range of motion in the affected area. If Calcium deficiency is the cause of your shoulder pain, you may experience dramatic improvement with Coral Calcium. Coral Calcium is better than other forms of Calcium because of its high bioassimilability. Coral Calcium is sometimes called "sea bones" because its chemical composition is so close to that of human bone. Reportedly, Coral Calcium has been occasionally used in facial reconstruction, with no rejection.

Used a slide rule,

Still have mine on the side, though guestimates tend to be near enough these days.....??

Abacus