Timeline for How did programmers work back when a computer was very expensive, rare, as big as a room?
Current License: CC BY-SA 2.5
22 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Jan 30, 2017 at 17:21 | comment | added | user4828 | @Giorgio, there are a few different way of defining a 'random' list of numbers, but they are mostly getting at the idea that there should not be any evident pattern in the numbers. Think of it this way: suppose you and I want to play a betting game. We'll take turns picking a random number from a list, and if your number is higher than mine, you win. You pick first. Would you want to play that game if the list of random numbers is sorted in order of increasing size? Mandatory XKCD reference: xkcd.com/221 | |
| Jan 30, 2017 at 5:34 | comment | added | Giorgio | @CharlesE.Grant: What I meant is that any permutation of a list of numbers is equally likely, so even the sorted list is a random value. At least this is my intuition, I might be missing something. | |
| Jan 30, 2017 at 2:48 | comment | added | user4828 | @Giorgio it introduces all sorts of correlations into any data tagged with a 'random' number from the sorted set. For example, you might have a time series of observation from a scientific instrument. Back in the day, you'd label the observations with a random number from your list, then sort the data by those labels to reduce the effect of instrumental drift over time on your analysis. If the label were already sorted before you assigned them to the observations, they'll end up still being in chronological order. | |
| Jan 29, 2017 at 10:36 | comment | added | Giorgio | @Charles E. Grant: How is a list of sorted numbers less random than a list of unsorted ones? | |
| May 15, 2012 at 20:59 | comment | added | configurator | @KateGregory: That was a joke... They didn't have a computer in the building, so they used the information highway to get their compilation done. | |
| May 15, 2012 at 20:57 | comment | added | Kate Gregory | @configurator no, there was no internet. There were machines to punch cards in several buildings on different university campuses, and one computer. The trucks took the cards to the computer, and brought back the output the next day or so. | |
| May 15, 2012 at 20:44 | comment | added | configurator | @KateGregory: So basically, your mom used the internet? | |
| Feb 25, 2011 at 2:07 | vote | accept | Louis Rhys | ||
| Feb 24, 2011 at 17:09 | comment | added | Bob Murphy | Yup, that's pretty much what I did when I started programming in 1971, except we had an IBM 1620 that was only the size of a couple of small cars, and we ran our own punch card decks through the reader rather than hand them in to a clerk. | |
| Feb 24, 2011 at 14:13 | comment | added | Incognito | Lets not even forget about the ways management enforced this. Your department was billed for time on the mainframe. | |
| Feb 24, 2011 at 11:40 | comment | added | jokoon | well fortunately visual studio has a good debugguer now... | |
| Feb 24, 2011 at 11:38 | comment | added | Kate Gregory | I used cards as late as 1981. Also when my mother was doing her grad work, their university didn't have a computer so the cards went on a truck once or twice a day and the printouts came back. Made typos super frustrating. | |
| Feb 24, 2011 at 11:14 | comment | added | SK-logic | This one is still my favorite: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VT50 | |
| Feb 24, 2011 at 11:01 | comment | added | S.Lott | The good old days. When the keypunch was a shared resource. And we had little red dot stickers we could put on our deck of cards to show that it was high priority and would get put into the card hopper first. | |
| Feb 24, 2011 at 10:51 | comment | added | biziclop | When I was four, my dad took me to work once and I was allowed to use the card punching machine. It was awesome. :) Do not fold, spindle or mutilate. | |
| Feb 24, 2011 at 10:27 | comment | added | sharptooth | @Louis Rhys: Will this link help? en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punched_card | |
| Feb 24, 2011 at 10:21 | comment | added | Louis Rhys | what is a punch card? | |
| Feb 24, 2011 at 8:27 | comment | added | user4828 | There was a famous story about some boss giving his assistant a tray of punch cards containing a set of random numbers. The assistant dropped the tray, and cards went all over the floor. Not knowing what else to do, the assistant picked up the cards and spent a couple hours sorting them into numerical order, which of course spoiled their randomness. | |
| Feb 24, 2011 at 8:23 | comment | added | Zachary K | I remember my uncle telling me that one! | |
| Feb 24, 2011 at 8:23 | history | edited | user4828 | CC BY-SA 2.5 | added 379 characters in body |
| Feb 24, 2011 at 8:21 | comment | added | sharptooth | Also numbering punch cards was a very good idea for cases like dropping the cards pack. | |
| Feb 24, 2011 at 8:17 | history | answered | user4828 | CC BY-SA 2.5 |