Difference between revisions of "Talk:1755: Old Days"

Explain xkcd: It's 'cause you're dumb.
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(Skip the headings of simple posts and remember to post below the previous post not at the top. Fixed the first three post)
(C, punched cards, and a song)
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Source Code on Punched Cards: As an undergrad at Durham Uni I remember punching PL1 source code onto cards to be inserted into a batch queue to be compiled and run on an IBM360 at the nearby city of Newcastle, overnight.
 
Source Code on Punched Cards: As an undergrad at Durham Uni I remember punching PL1 source code onto cards to be inserted into a batch queue to be compiled and run on an IBM360 at the nearby city of Newcastle, overnight.
 
[[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.160|141.101.98.160]] 11:57, 4 November 2016 (UTC)
 
[[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.160|141.101.98.160]] 11:57, 4 November 2016 (UTC)
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I'm reminded of Frank Hayes' song, "When I Was a Boy": "And we programmed in ones and in zeroes / And sometimes we ran out of ones!" On a more serious note, C came out in the late seventies, and I was using punch cards as late as 1975. That's not "long" before, and I wouldn't be too surprised if there were C compilers that accepted punched card input. [[User:Gmcgath|Gmcgath]] ([[User talk:Gmcgath|talk]]) 12:27, 4 November 2016 (UTC)

Revision as of 12:27, 4 November 2016


Reflections on Trusting Trust (pdf), Ken Thompson's acceptance speech for the 1984 Turing Award, in which he discusses creating a backdoor in the C compiler (yes, there was only 1 when he invented the language) that itself creates a second backdoor in the login program when it is compiled. Additionally, it reproduces itself when compiling the C compiler from un-tampered-with source code, so that anyone using the binary (compiled) compiler would be unable to avoid reproducing the backdoor in all its forms. This is the sort of thing that gives security programmers nightmares. 108.162.221.168 04:52, 4 November 2016 (UTC) (bonsaiviking)

The "4-6 weeks" thing might be a reference to high-performance computing, in particular scientific calculations, a few decades back. From what I've heard from older people in my scientific field (I'm too young to have experienced it myself), you'd prepare your program on punch cards, mail these to an institution owning a fast computer (because your group or university didn't have one), and they'd run the program and mail the result back to you. This, I've been told, took a few weeks. Maybe someone with first-hand experience can give more information. 141.101.104.98 10:34, 4 November 2016 (UTC)

Source Code on Punched Cards: As an undergrad at Durham Uni I remember punching PL1 source code onto cards to be inserted into a batch queue to be compiled and run on an IBM360 at the nearby city of Newcastle, overnight. 141.101.98.160 11:57, 4 November 2016 (UTC)

I'm reminded of Frank Hayes' song, "When I Was a Boy": "And we programmed in ones and in zeroes / And sometimes we ran out of ones!" On a more serious note, C came out in the late seventies, and I was using punch cards as late as 1975. That's not "long" before, and I wouldn't be too surprised if there were C compilers that accepted punched card input. Gmcgath (talk) 12:27, 4 November 2016 (UTC)