When PC Still Means 'Punch Card'

ricst writes: "The New York Times reports that there are stll many applications that use punchcards. "Use what?", you say. Slashdotters not yet in their dotage may have never seen these 80 column Hollerith field cards, or the clunky machines that are still used to punch holes in them. And let's not forget the bizarre JCL (Job Control Language) that's needed to be at the front of the deck. Well... turns out many companies still use them, with slight modifications (like the airlines that print a magnetic strip on them)."

oh yeah...

[doooras]

after enough holes get punched in your card you get a free sandwich, right?

Use JCL to stop junk mail (postal)?

[leighklotz]

As a friend asked me recently, I wonder how many applications could cope with someone named "//SYSIN DD *"

.net?

[hex1848]

heh,

/me wonders if the .net interpreter can handle punch cards along with the 87 other languages it claims to be able to compile

I see

[felipeal]

...that there are stll many applications that use punchcards.

Like the state-of-art US ellection system...

When I was kid.

[TheGeneration]

I always found the punch card stories my professors told to be about as enthralling as the "I walked through snow barefoot up hills, both ways" stories my grand daddy told me.

Both are of equal value. (ie, whine = whine)

I can still remember.....

[superid]

....sitting at the 029 saying "someday they're gonna bury me face down, 9 edge first"

SuperID

Re:this is one of my problems with 'geeks'.

[2Bits]

Hey dude, upgrading for the sake of upgrading is how you make the economy move. Beside, the US president is asking people to go out and spend money, it's an act of patriotism.

Airman Initiation...

[phraktyl]

This reminds me of my Air Force days, when I heard many stories of how the Data Center admins would bring in a large bag of chad and dump it on the table in front of the new guy. They would make him sort it into Classified and Unclassified piles, with the Classified chad being anything with a marking on it. After several hours of tedious work, someone would run by and the breeze would mix it all back together on the table, making the poor Airman do it all over...

I was told that very few realized that they could just treat it *all* as Classified, and burn it. Heh.

Free Punch Cards

[TheMatt]

Can't believe I didn't see this link: Free Punch Cards [acme.com]. I especially love the graphical punch your own card.

They have their uses

[Spooky Possum]

We had stacks of them in the lab I used to work in.

We called them "incremental height adjusters".

Very useful.

Re:Use JCL to stop junk mail (postal)?

[Ymerej]

Or someone named /. Would that automatically overload the system with requests from all over the world?

Re:Seen them!? I punched 'em - still have a box ..

[Anonymous Coward]

You would probably be bored by my stories about entering PDP-11 code on the console switches in octal

You had octal? Base 8 hadn't been invented yet when I started programming.

JCL

[Registered Coward v2]

One of the advantages of JCL was you could put a few cards at the front of your deck that said "please do a warm boot" so someone couldn't run a program before you that caused all subesquent programs to be read as data an print mindless gibberish as the "output".

Nest week: Switching the run and parity error light covers on an 1130 for fun and profit.

Re:Use JCL to stop junk mail (postal)?

[doooras]

/. is going to be the name of my firstborn.

why is this story posted so late?

[brer_rabbit]

I mean, anyone who relates to this story is probably in bed asleep already. ;)

Re:My College Actually Had a Pre-req Course in JCL

[SirSlud]

Actually, I think they'd say "Carpe Diem" .. but whats the diff, trolls were never known for their broad liberal educations anyhow ... ;)

Great Joke

[Peridriga]

O OOOO O O OO O OO O OO OOO OO
OO OO OOO O OOOO OOOOO O OO O OOO
OO OO O O OOO OOO OO O OOO O O
O0O000O00O0 O O O OOOOO O O OOOOO
OOO O OO OOO OOOO OO OO O OO OOO
OO O OO O OOO OOO O O OOOOO O OO
O O OOOOOO O O OO0O000 O O OOO OO


I've always loved that joke....