We had 026 and 029 card punches and we had to punch them ourselves. Submit them to the operators and get your printout then next day. If you knew somebody in there, later the same day.

That's the difference between Prince Charles and a bald man. One is the heir apparent, the other has no hair apparent and if you throw in a shaggy dog with puppies, that's a hairy parent

After university, I worked in a mining company which had a CDC 7000. I remember that it had a file system called LISA (Linked Access Sequential Access I think it meant). When they upgraded to a CDC Cyber something it was fantastic. We used to compile the program and then do the fine tuning in the assembly output to get speed. That was the time when we used manual stop watches to measure the speed of a program when we tried to get the best time possible, a couple of seconds more or less didn't make a difference.

Fortran IV IBM 360 Watfor compiler - February 1971 University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg as a student. First paid program on same computer as a research assistant December 1971. 50 years ago.

They have forgotten about negative numbers :(

I see your 62 and raise you to 68

I sold my first program as a student December 1971. 50 years later I'm still coding and I enjoy it. My official title is IT Manager but I leave the managing to ambitious youngsters while I code, tweak and refactor. Last year I switched from VB .Net to C# and now I'm starting to learn Python. I've never regretted this path and given the option I would do it again. Knuth wrote about the "Art of Computer Programming" and art it is. Every day I discover new things and enjoy the beauty I find in this art.

I have always had fun with all the languages I have worked with. Fortran IV On an IBM 360. Back in 1971 COBOL PL/I Assembler C Basic in numerous flavours from GW-BASIC, QBasic, Basic for the Oric, VB all up to 6 VB.Net and some I have forgotten. The first version I ever saw was in the 70s on an HP Computer that had a one line/80 character display. Actually wrote a small word processor on that. Clipper with DBase I loved until Nantucket stepped aside SQL is the one I cannot live without PHP is fun but I have never used it professionally. I have just started using C# and it looks good.

I've been using VB since VB6 almost 20 years ago and have used it to build full blown accounting systems and many other business applications. I have never found it lacking for anything I needed to do but what bugs me is that whenever I read articles about Visual Studio, the focus is on c++ and c# and VB is relegated to footnotes or sometimes entirely forgotten. Many times I've thought of switching to one of the C based languages but is there actually a reason for me to delve into this?

1971 university - IBM 360 Fortran IV on punch cards. I still remember the 026 and 029 card punches. Designing algorithms for the Universal Turing machine and using Facit machines to design number crunching programs. First time I got paid for a program was December 1971 as an assistant to a PhD candidate who needed some programs. Today, 48 years later, I am still earning my living writing programs. Gone through all the languages. Fortran, PL/1, Assembler, Cobol, Basic in numerous flavours, C, C#, php, CLipper with DBIV and probably a whole lot of others that I don't remeber. I am currently learning Python. It's been a wonderful journey and I wouldn't change it for anything.