[nknighthb]

But too young to know writing code and speccing data structures on paper (and/or napkins...) was quite common before airplane-friendly computers were available? (And for a long time after, really; ubiquitous ownership of laptops is a quite recent thing).

[bluedino]

From this Woz quote it was pretty common:

"I wrote all my code on paper in hexadecimal. I couldn't afford an assembler to translate my programs into hexadecimal bytes, I did it myself. Even my BASIC interpreter is all hand written. I'd type 4K into the Apple I and ][ in about an hour. I, and many others too I think, could sit down and start typing hexadecimal in for a SMALL program to solve something that occured or something that somebody else wanted. I'd do this all the time for demos. I certainly don't remember which hexadecimal codes are which 6502 instructions any longer, but it was a part of life back then."

[pauljonas]

When I started my programming career, my first boss did not know how to use a text editor. He could perform a randomizing routine in his head but he trembled at using a text editor -- he still used punched cards and/or a mainframe utility that emulated a punch card. And lots of programmers coded first on columnar grid paper (shades of green and white, demarcations at 8, 12, 16 to help you indent properly.

[csixty4]

My community college still had us writing C on huge tablets of that IBM grid paper in the late 90s. I can't imagine writing huge amounts of production-worthy code that way.

[simula67]

Possibly stupid question : Why did he not write the assembler himself ?

[bluedino]

I'd guess because of memory limitations. Some more info on those days:

http://www.landsnail.com/apple/local/applewoz.htm

http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/JohnSzczepaniak/20130507/1918...

[WalterBright]

I used to fill spiral notebooks with code back in the 70's. This was back when I'd have to go to the "computer center" to use the actual computer.

[DerpDerpDerp]

I still prefer to write on paper on planes.

[sgt]

Me too - although if it's code, then it's going to more like pseudo code or simply "concepts" and ideas.

[Tloewald]

For that matter, pocket calculators programmable in BASIC started becoming quite inexpensive in the mid-80s.