My first "real" program was 3000 punched cards.
Can you guess the language? (That should be a clue).
My grade in that course was dependent upon completing this "project". One Monday, I decided to take a few days and go to NOLA in the middle of the week, so I stored my box and half of cards and placed them on a shelf in a closet in the computer room, knowing they would be safe.
On my return, I found my box and a half of cards were missing. As panic set in, I asked everyone I knew what happened to my project, and all I got was, "I have no idea.".
Finally, I asked a clerk in the RJE terminal office and she said, "Oh, yeah, someone from the Art department came down and wanted some cards to make paper flowers out of".
As I walked into the room in the Art dept., I saw my cards -- mostly intact, but strewn from one end of a table to another -- many crumpled beyond use. They were unsequenced, so it took me a day or two to get them back in order and reproduce the cards that were destroyed.
This was my first experience with not making backups. |
