Yep, and absolutely no graphics (unless you could print it on greenbar fanfold paper with text characters).DementedPurple wrote:Wow. What computer did you use for Fortran IV, I know that computers like the Apple II and Commodore PET existed, but did you have to use a computer the size of a room?Garth wrote:My first exposure to programming was Fortran IV in college in 1978, but no useful depth yet. My first real programming was on a TI-58c calculator starting in Dec '81, followed soon after by 6502 in a class in the spring of '82, concurrent with a Fortran IV class.
My early interest in electronics (1970's) was in stereo and amateur radio, not computers. Remember the line in the movie "Pirates of Silicon Valley" where the executive, puzzled and tapping his pencil on the desk, said slowly, "What would the common man want with a computer?" (They must have had some good laughs making the movie.) Back then, computers were rare, huge, and expensive, and people who worked with them seemed next to God or something.
I've been inactive in amateur radio since 1984, but I've maintained my license only in case I'd want to make my own radar or missile-guidance system to take out an ice-cream truck or something exciting.
I got mildly interested in computers when I wanted to do audio and RF circuit calculations that took thousands of iterations. I got a TI-58c programmable calculator in Dec '81. The next year, I took a class on 6502 which used AIM 65 computers, and a Fortran IV class which required doing our practice on the school's IBM 360 mainframe computer. You'd transfer your hand-written program onto cards at a big card-punch machine so the dresser-sized card reader could accept it, then rubber-band the cards together with a paper having your account number and put it in a cubby, and come back two hours later for a printout of all the reasons it wouldn't run. By then, the boys who had access to an Apple or TRS-80 or similar were using BASIC, and assembly if they were more adventurous; but the school was behind the times. It reminds me of the 1969 movie "The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes" where Medfield College was given its first computer, free, because the computer (apparently a Burroughs B205) was already so outdated.