Have laptop screens changed shape?

[Sue]

Hmmm. When I was a student, to run a programme you had to punch it all onto a stack of cards, then the data had to be on a stack of cards too.

And if you muddled the order of the cards, you were in trouble. Don't even think about dropping the box they were in.

Then the computer was a huge huge thing which had a room to itself and had a team of people to run it.

To run a statistical test, you took the box of cards in and came back a day or so later. To be given sheets and sheets of paper with "error, error, error" on them.

Then you had to take the box of cards away, go through them all, and try to find out which one/s had the error on.

Then you'd punch out those cards again, hopefully correctly, and take the box back to the computing lab and so on and so on.

The last time I did it was for a statistical test called the Kolmogorov?Smirnov test. I imagine these days you just type in the data and get the result with one click.

Happy days :))

ETA: Oh, and I tried learning Fortran once. That was a mistake. My brain hit a brick wall round about the fourth lesson and I never finished the course :))

[DulwichFox]

Sue.. we are of similar age and as a concequence remember things like that...

Although I have never heard of the Kolmogorov?Smirnov test and have never used or seen Fortran.

Did use punched tape when I did a Teleprinter course.

Foxy

[Sue]

Can't get the link to copy properly :(