Dinosaur
Joined 24 August 2022
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The COBOL programme would read text into variables A and B, set values into x and y, and if A was "numeric" and B was "numeric", proceed. Alas, I was unclear on the distinction between programme source statements, and run-time compiled code. There are of course many languages whereby exactly this would work, possibly with the introduction of something like an "evaluate(A)" statement, but, COBOL is not one of them. Ah well.
In 1970 at Auckland University, the Applied Mathematics class introduced the AMI computer, a decimal computer with a thousand five-digit words of storage, which one programmed in machine code only, thus learning about the bootstrap, the loader and the relocating loader, as well as writing
"It will work." "No, it won't" - first milkshake.
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Over the Christmas holidays I gained money instead of milkshakes: employed by the computer centre to write a data-checking system in Fortran, plus my first introduction to IBM1130 assembler.
In 1972 the family moved to Wellington on my father's promotion to Chief Surveyor, and so to Victoria University where we students had access to the IBM1130 and Clive Nicolson was the pre-eminent expert and the same height as me - 6'4" so we could not
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