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Re:System Bus Radio: Transmits AM radio on computers without... by mark-r on Wednesday January 17, 2018 @09:45AM (#16168222)
Back then most programming for those machines was done at that level!
Re:System Bus Radio: Transmits AM radio on computers without... by braythwayt on Wednesday January 17, 2018 @09:52AM (#16168289)
When I first laid eyes on the "High Speed Job Stream" in UofT's Sanford Fleming building (that particular building has since burnt down and been replaced), students were running jobs in PL/1, WATFIV, LISP, SPITBOL, COBOL, and many others.

In the labs, there were IBM Selectric terminals dedicated to APL.

And there was a BASIC dialect over at what was then "Ryerson Polytechnic." There was a room with terminals and acoustic couplers, no security to keep you out.

You need a username and password to use the terminals, but the username and password for each class was posted on a corkboard, so you would write your own programs as long as you didn't get in the way of actual students trying to finish their assignments.

I don't doubt that "most" programming was done in assembler, but there was no shortage of higher-level programming going on.

Re:System Bus Radio: Transmits AM radio on computers without... by mark-r on Wednesday January 17, 2018 @10:49AM (#16168832)
I said most programming for those particular machines. I agree that mainframes had largely moved on, and probably the larger minis too. My first exposure to programming was time-shared Basic in 1972.
Re:System Bus Radio: Transmits AM radio on computers without... by braythwayt on Wednesday January 17, 2018 @01:56PM (#16170635)
You know, I think we've somehow fallen into _violent agreement_ on all subjects.