[WalterBright]

I kept my notes from college. They're pretty much useless today because there's no context.

If I had had the foresight to bring along a cassette recorder, that would have been the context. But I didn't, and neither did anyone else. Of course, there's no way I could have afforded the large number of cassette tapes, either, so the point is moot.

It's too bad all those lectures are lost to history.

[SteveGerencser]

It's interesting to me that no one had a cassette recorder in class. When I was working on my degree in the mid 90s nearly everyone had a recorder on their desk while they were taking notes. I didn't record every class or even every lecture, I focused mostly on the topics/lectures where I had difficulties. If I 'got it' I usually recorded over that tape.

I may even have a box of them somewhere around here in the barn.

[WalterBright]

> It's interesting to me that no one had a cassette recorder in class.

Not too surprising given that a cassette tape in the 70's cost several dollars (equivalent to maybe $20 today). It was so expensive it simply didn't occur to people to record such things.

It's like photos. The cheapest 35mm photo cost a buck an image, and this was for slides, not prints. It's why photos of my college career are nearly non-existent. And movie film - forget about it.

[WalterBright]

> I may even have a box of them somewhere around here in the barn.

I recommend digitizing them. Cassettes don't last forever, and you'll probably enjoy hearing them again.

[zerr]

I'd say it depends on the lecturer and how the lecture is held. Some read it specifically for the notes to be taken. And it is assumed that students would learn from these notes afterwards, which are much more concise compared to textbooks.

[WalterBright]

My notes were usually just copying whatever the prof wrote on the blackboard while lecturing. It was usually all I could do to keep up.

But reading the notes later would cause me to recollect what was said, and so the notes were very useful. Unfortunately, enough time has passed that I've forgotten what was said, and only have the notes.

It's like watching a sitcom with the sound turned off :-/

[lukeramsden]

Maybe a "Paircast[0] for lecture notes"-type application could help with this. Records audio, maybe even transcribing it (if high enough quality), while also tracking how the notes relate to the audio across the time of the lecture.

As for lectures in the past, it is a shame we may have lost them, as it seems to me (purely speculatively) that the lectures from the 70s and 80s seemed to make a whole different class of programmers to the ones of today. Or maybe it was the tinkering and not the lectures, who knows.

[0] https://paircast.io/