On 12/30/2016 5:40 AM, Lisi Reisz wrote:
On Friday 30 December 2016 01:37:53 Xen wrote:
You do realize that coding implies hammering on a keyboard too, right?
No, I do not realise that coding *implies* hammering on a keyboard. Coding
the lazy modern way can be done via a keyboard. But coding itself most
emphatically does not imply it.
I knew I was old but ... I cannot even find a reference to coding without a
keyboard. I had difficulty finding a reference to anything more basic and
nearer to the CPU than Assembler.
For the record, I (and surely at least one or two others on this list??!)
remember coding with pin boards, sheets with squares, punched cards ...
I never used a pin board, but as a junior engineer I helped
create the wire lists to take input (an open/closed contact) from
>1000 points in power plants and associated distribution system
for presentation in a control room on a Visual Annunciator.
How the lamps lit was dependent on contact state, contact change
of state and current state of a large number of other contacts.
The lamps could be on, off, or flashing at a specified rate.
I think that fits any reasonable definition of programming. The
overall system had an equivalent of macros -- implemented by
small cards with TTL chips whose fine detail of operation could
be programmed by selecting which jumpers were installed.
Taking a keyboard anywhere near a computer was a positively late addition to
the peripherals available. ;-) It is certainly possible to code without one.
Come to that, before the Ark we wrote without one too. ;-)
Lisi
