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Lets not forget they sold one of the first 14 pound cell phones for a mere $1500. And that was without the batterypack.
And a new thermal paper fax machine that cost $999. It was worth every penny.
Our 1st company computer was an IBM 36 mainframe that took the large floppy disks and the Monitors weighted about 60 lbs each. We had to have a separate room and installed a window air conditioner to keep it cool.
Do they still write in RPG II ?
Everyone asked if their PC was IBM Compatible. Had to get the term "Ram" explained at least 4 times. What was Ram at that time 8-16K ?
We hired a computer school guy to write us programs for our new IBM PC. Took him forever.
You know we talk about terminology. How about those us who had to write a script (small program) and run it each time for things that are now a click of the mouse. Like the script we wrote to partition space on the computer, or to create a folder, or for the modem to work (ATDT strings). And for those us who wrote programs had to write a JCL (Job Control Language) program for it to run. Just to find out that different versions of computers took differnt JCLs (IBM 360/370 vs 3334). We had to also be able to think in (and program in) Base 16 or Base 2 or EBCDIC.
But also lets not forget those of us who had to repair computers rather than pull a board and throw in a new one. We had to know how resistors (read the lines), capacitors (fareds), coils, etc worked and sometimes had to build our own circuit to replace the one shorted out in the computer.
And now how people take it for granted that a mouse click is running a small program written by someone a little over 30 years ago.
Its probably why the big companies keep us around because we can debug from the inside out rather than from the outside in. We know not only the terminology, but we know exactly how it works (not its definition).
I've had numerous times where I've been flown to different parts of the planet, Walk in see a whole team of young people sitting there trying to resolve a issue for many days, look at the problem, type and load a script and watch their problem disappear and everything start functioning. And before walking back out of that room looking at their faces with the WTH look. Sometimes they would ask me how I knew what do to? I wouldn't tell them (hey I gotta keep my job). But I do tell them that if all the alt+ commands still work and they are from the nonGUI/DOS days, why wouldnt you expect the base code to work from this manufacturer from over 30 years ago. There are MVS codes that are still in the system and usable.
Being handed a 16" thick COBOL source code printout and hearing "there's a problem, charlie just quit and his program won't compile, fix it.
Hahah. I remember the day my company lost the entire batch of work processed overnight becasue someone accidently deleted a period when changing a line of code. It took us hours to find that.
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Hey... CANDE was a good editor, learned it on a B1000. wiffle? didn't play with it much....
