[gentoo-user] Re: Get off my lawn?

[Grant Edwards]

On 2015-01-17, Philip Webb <purslow@××××××××.net> wrote:
> 150116 walt wrote:
>> I'd love to see a bar-chart of the age distribution of gentoo devs
>> & compare it to a chart of the people who hang out in this mailing list :)
>
> New devs usually seem to describe themselves as
> "I live in a town in Germany with my wife & 2-year-old daughter ;
> I am finishing my MSc in computer science ;
> my hobbies are playing the guitar & riding my mountain bike".
>
> OTOH I suspect most of us here starting computing with punched cards ...

Actually, I started with OMR IBM cards where you marked them in
pencil.  You sent your deck off to the University for scanning and
running, and week later you got your results.  At least I think they
were IBM.  They were the same form factor as regular IBM punch cards.
IIRC, each logical column had two physical columns for marks.  You put
two marks in each _logical_ column which selected the symbol _between_
the marks.  Something like this:

 [ ]A[ ]
  0   P 
 [ ]B[ ]
  1   Q 
 [ ]C[ ]
  2   R 
 [ ]D[ ]<---
  3   S      Mark these two for 'S'
 [ ]E[ ]<---
    .   
    .   
    .   
 [ ]J[ ]
  9   Y 
 [ ]K[ ]
  *   Z 
 [ ]L[ ]
  /   ) 
 [ ]M[ ]
  +   ( 
 [ ]N[ ]
  -   . 
 [ ]O[ ]
  |   |
  |   |
  +---+---- Mark these two for 'O'


Oviously I left out some punction characters that would have been
required.  IIRC, you only got about logical 40 columns per card.

Anybody else remember those cards?  I can't find the right set of
keywords in Google to find a picture.

It wasn't until years later that I graduated to punched cards (Woot!
80 columns) and paper-tape (Woot! light machine all over everything
else in your backpack.)

--
Grant