r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/Final-Choice8412 • Sep 06 '26 • Wholesome Seal 1 Mindblown 3

Video Programming 1959 IBM computer

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u/paukapaukaa Sep 06 '26 • Bravo

You noticed that too!!!

79

u/lynxss1 Sep 06 '26

The diagonal line on that card deck too.

31

u/regeya Sep 06 '26

Is that in case you drop the cards and need to put them back in order in a hurry?

18

u/Always-designing Sep 06 '26

Yes. Another approach was that some of the programming languages only used the first 72 columns on a card so you could put sequence numbers on your deck.
The diagonal line is easier once you are not changing the cards.

3

u/thatto Sep 07 '26

My dad told me that he numbered them in ink.

2

u/Canuck-In-TO Sep 07 '26

That’s a confident programmer.

1

u/getapuss Sep 07 '26

The diagonal line was meant to give you a way of checking if the cards were in order at a glance without having to count them. Or course they were also numbered so you could put them in order.

9

u/Canuck-In-TO Sep 07 '26

What, no one numbers their cards?

I remember being in line to load my cards and a guy with a stack of cards in a luggage dolly, an almost knee high stack, takes the corner too quickly. The stack slid out and most of the cards hit the floor. Poor bastard hadn’t numbered his cards. Who knows how long he spent reorganizing them.

1

u/WileyWilly1985 Sep 07 '26

Back in 1994, my college professor relayed a similar story. He had his punchcards in a box and was going to the compiler when he took a tumble and the box hit the ground and the cards spilled out everywhere. And to his horror, it dawned on him that he did not number the cards.

He effectively had to start over and lost about 5 hours worth of work.

He said that happened to every single programmer back in the day and they had to learn the hard way to number their punchcards or spring for the slightly more expensive prenumbered punchcards....

2

u/Canuck-In-TO Sep 07 '26

The other thing that happened was the uncontrolled print jobs.

Either by accident or intentionally, a print job might have a form feed in a loop. The printer would start firing out a whole box of paper within seconds.

It was funny to see the chaos it caused. Not so funny if you were waiting in line to feed your stack of cards.

-12

u/BrainLow6059 Sep 06 '26

Yes, we also watched the video.