Computer Error

[Nassik]

With a magnet. Oh' geez'.

I do remember using those floppy disks as a kid, though.

[Frank McGrath]

Youngsters? Not moi... Long, long ago, in a galaxy not so far away, I loaded code from paper tape.

OMG! I thought I would NEVER ever see a reference to paper tape again.

[Friday]

Back to the OP, long before computers those of us in the auto industry (or racing of same) would speak of the "loose nut behind the wheel"

When I am having computer issues I always blame it on the loose nut operating the system.

[Geoff Withnell]

Keypunched COBOL onto cards for a college class. . . when I was three years old, mind you LOL

GAD, COBOL on Hollerith cards! That caused brain damage, you know.

[Livingston]

And then there is Mom. She was a keypunch operator at the Rock Island Arsenal when she was in her teens during WWII.

[MNlad]

All together . . . "Do Not Bend, Fold, Spindel, or Mutilate." Ah, the joy of tripping and scattering 150 punch cards of code across the floor. That was back in the day when the company's computer geeks (in lab coats, no less) were the only ones with air conditioning.

Me old? Nah.

[tpa]

So a few of you guys can remember the days when computer programs either worked or did not work. At least you knew where you stood. Now days the chances of getting the same response to the same input 2 days running can't be much more than 50:50. Then the computer does what it wants to do, when you want it to actually do something useful and most of the time when you switch it on, you have no idea what is going to happen or whether you are going to get the same result from the same input as yesterday.
Sure it's often the guy in the chair, but not always the one that is in front of your computer.
I also have a nasty suspicion that automatic MS updates to previous operating systems are not always in your best interests.

[ScotFree]

Computers raise passive/aggressiveness to a level that cats can only hope to aspire to one day.

My first job in the computer field was feeding punch cards into the reader attached to the IBM 360 mainframe. Such memories. That was back in the days when the computer crashed ... you ducked!

[rmccool]

A software update - whether from MS or anyone else - is the process of removing a few old bugs and installing lots of new ones.


IF THEN DO LOOP SUBROUTINE GOTO,
Let's all code in FORTRAN like the science hackers do!
- Paul Shuch (IF THEN DO LOOP)

[Truitt]

Whew, at my first duty station in the USAF (many, many years ago) we had a 1-D-10-T form for new people to fill out. I had forgotten about that.

And my first programming was on puch cards.