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I know (knew) 370 Assembler language & Grace Hopper’s child. SQL Server and Business Intelegence was my programming swan song. Half Life II was the last “video” game I played. I am always up for a game of Upwords or WWF. Airplane mode games like Majong and Suduko too.
P.S. Also typed on an IPad Pro. Somehow an iPad while watching TV with the wife is more acceptable than using a laptop on the couch. Go figure.
I was in college when they started a full schedule of programming classes. I took fortran and cobol and one more I don't remember the name. What proved most important was I also did well in assembler 3-70. I got hired by a small bank as they were revising their assembler programs for the bank functions to cobol. I also came up with a much simpler and functional way to feed in the bank data in machine language. I would have stayed with them if the bank hadn't been bought and everyone let go as soon as the turn over was finished.
I still LOVE Cobol... wish there was a pc version of it I could play with. I'm sure todays pc's could handle it.
I had a few favorite games, but mostly have put my screen time into messaging and writing very dark star trek stories in a trek universe where they didn't squeek through all those times they did in the show. Also I love the theme of how our characters handle seeing their cherished image smashed in order for them to survive.
Especially what if they'd lost the Dominion war, with many shades of ww2. the cost of survival and when is it treason? It was very interesting how the movies picked up the dark themes over the honorable civilizations squeeking by.
I find it interesting that fan fiction has always been an active form of fandom, but now with some form of computer to read them on, it has become much more mainstream. And the home sites of shows include space for stories.
And if we didn't have laptops and all the other ways of watching things, what would we do with all the "as this interested you, we thought this might as well" with more fan written or created content.
I still LOVE Cobol... wish there was a pc version of it I could play with. I'm sure todays pc's could handle it.
You are in luck! Just did a quick Google search of the term, "COBOL compiler for pc" and it yields all kinds of links for no-cost COBOL compilers for PC/Mac/Linux machines.
I took COBOL during an intersession during my undergraduate days, (late 70s/early 80s). It was a three-week class that was the same as a full semester course. Think I got an "A" in the course. As a challenge, for my final project, I wrote a 400-something line program without a single GO TO. That wasn't easy, but it worked.
My undergraduate degree was Computer Science, (and got a minor in Geography at the same time). Among the languages I took was PDP-11 for assembly language, SLAM for the simulation language, Fortran IV, even had to write a compiler for another class. But the main one was Pascal for most of the classes. On my Heathkit H-89, I had Fortran, Pascal, Zilog Z-80 assembly, and H-Basic, (even though I never used that one).
Never did get to the end of Colossal Cave, (Adventure). That game was so frustrating if you didn't get any help from others.
IMO, modern (ish) computer games really started coming out in the mid 90s or so. I'm 32. I grew up on Doom and Age of Empires. If you go too much further back than that, you get into very simple games that are vastly different conceptually than what is popular today. It's unlikely someone who is currently retired would have gotten into gaming in the mid 90s.
If you go too much further back, the machines didn't have enough memory for more complex games. My first PC was an Epson Apex 100 with a EGA monitor (16 colors!). Within six months of my 1986 purchase, my EGA was superseded by VGA. The PC had 640 KB and used 360 KB floppy disks. This machine didn't have enough memory to run Windows. While Windows was invented in 85, most computers at that point in time were DOS and didn't come with Windows.
If you go too much further back, the machines didn't have enough memory for more complex games. My first PC was an Epson Apex 100 with a EGA monitor (16 colors!). Within six months of my 1986 purchase, my EGA was superseded by VGA. The PC had 640 KB and used 360 KB floppy disks. This machine didn't have enough memory to run Windows. While Windows was invented in 85, most computers at that point in time were DOS and didn't come with Windows.
Computers were always something work gave me once I migrated from minicomputers and workstations to Mac/PC. I didn't buy one until I took a couple of years off in late-1998 through 2000. Before 1997, if someone handed me a PC, I put Unix on it so I could at least do something useful with it.
I agree. I hated moving from character based to the mouse. Give me vi any day.
I used Lemmy for a while on Windows. That's a shareware Windows version of vi. It hasn't been updated since 2005 but I imagine it still works on Win 10.
I use keyboards with a pointing device/trackpoint on the keyboard. I touch type. I refuse to use a mouse.
I was in college when they started a full schedule of programming classes. I took fortran and cobol and one more I don't remember the name. What proved most important was I also did well in assembler 3-70. I got hired by a small bank as they were revising their assembler programs for the bank functions to cobol.
I still LOVE Cobol... wish there was a pc version of it I could play with. I'm sure todays pc's could handle it.
I had a few favorite games, but mostly have put my.
LOL. You must not have any clue how many applications running today are in cobol. We use it every day.
I used Lemmy for a while on Windows. That's a shareware Windows version of vi. It hasn't been updated since 2005 but I imagine it still works on Win 10.
I use keyboards with a pointing device/trackpoint on the keyboard. I touch type. I refuse to use a mouse.
Woof! What kind of technical field are you in, may I ask?
Lack of a mouse would have eliminated my entire career and current hobbies. Electronic CAD, Home Design CAD, Solidworks design, Photoshop/Gimp/ Image processing and virtually any kind of graphics, any kind of spreadsheet analysis, and about 90% of advanced computing, medical imaging...
I would be a pauper if it weren't for the mouse! Thank you Xerox!!!
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