| We generally started with flow charts, sketching them out on regular paper. Once we were ready to write the code, say in FORTRAN, COBOL, PL/I or assembler, we would write out the code on wide pads of paper that had graph paper like markings so that each character was written in a single box and it was easy to keep track of columns. Every programmer I ever met punched his or her own cards. Key punch operators did exist but were more often employed to enter data at keypunch machines because data was often fed into computers via large stacks of punched cards. Data was virtually always entered in fixed fields on the 80 column punch cards. The actual keypunching was done most often, during my time, on the IBM 029 keypunch machine. I actually started out on the IBM 026 keypunch, but the 029 was much more suitable for keypunching programs. (The 026, a 1949 design, had no plus sign or parentheses on their keyboards and required a kind of complicated shift where it took multiple key strokes to punch out the correct holes so that the Hollerith code of holes for the parentheses could be entered.) By the time I got to MIT everyone was using the much better 029. Operating the 029 required first punching a card to be fitted on the control drum of the machine, it controlled tab stops an some other basic field skipping. One also had to learn how to clear card jams and how to quickly duplicate cards or make minor corrections in a card by duplicating parts of a card while inserting new punches at certain locations. Once a few hundred or maybe a thousand cards were punched you carefully carried the decks in boxes to be assembled into trays of cards that the mainframe operators would take at a submission window. Then it was time for a break while you waited sometimes even overnight depending on your priority for the results, printed on wide sheets of fan-fold paper with alternating green and white stripes on it. Careful desk checking of the code was required because turn around time was always several minutes and there were times for me when I would not get my output back for hours. Each bug or even syntax error meant starting over back at the keypunch to fix the error. One's source resided in your box of cards, it didn't remain on the machine after your run, successful or not, completed. |