When I searched the posts on this thread, I found a number of people had posted info about their 1st experiences with computers. I registered to get some info just over 1½ years ago and am only now posting for the first time.
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I not only remember punch cards, I worked with them. (Both as an operator and a programmer, in FORTRAN).
My first personal computer was an IBM PC, 5150. (Not an XT, 5160 or an AT, 5170.) In fact it is model Ⓑ, which has a 64/256K motherboard.
I was astounded, when I got it, because it had
- 20 times the memory of the IBM 360 mini computer I was working on,
- 2 360K, 5¼" floppy drives rather than the 3 ~18" disk pack drives connected to the 360, which held the same amount of data (each), and
- fit on my desk (with room left over) rather than fill a whole room and require serious air conditioning.
I learned FORTRAN, on punch cards, and then taught myself BASIC. I always believed the these languages were far less than optimal, for any purpose. Eventually I learned C, LISP, PROLOG, C++, and HTML.
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Though there were ample public domain books (no longer in copyright) available for download (now in a variety of digital formats) I found reading them on a computer screen was tedious. Others I spoke to, in the computer science department where I was studying, agreed and we all concluded that when monitors were made such that an entire US letter sized page could be displayed full size, we would start reading on the computer.
Well I now have a flat screen that can be rotated and all the OSes and graphics hardware I've been used recently are capable of displaying a vertical image. So my rhetorical question is, Why are so many WEB sites hard coded for a horizontal display? HTML is after all designed so the size and/or aspect ratio of a page automatic adjusts to the display screen.
