Skip to main content

Back to the Future - My World of Tomorrow

My World of Tomorrow – Back to the Future

The build up to the Business Connexion (BCX) event has really got me thinking back over the early days of working in the computer industry.

As a fully fledged baby boomer, my career started when being a computer programmer still had a strong air of mystique.

Computer rooms were gigantic, smoke free zones, limited to the chosen few.

We hand wrote code, the punch room ladies punched it onto cards, and we booked time for testing.

Testing time was very tight, the reason so many of us worked lots of overtime.    Much easier to get a testing slot after hours, and the computer rooms ran 24 hours shifts, anyway.

Overtime usually started with drinks at Jimmy’s Tavern in Braamfontein, and led to a few punch card disasters!

Carrying the punch cards for a big program was a delicate, balancing act.   If you dropped them, getting them back into order was a real challenge, even if you remembered to number them….

At NCR, developing communications systems so that computers could talk to each other was done through wiring.  I loved this.   We had insertion tools (our poor trainers struggled to control classes on this topic!) and different coloured wires which you had to carefully insert into (if I remember correctly, it is a long time ago) a glass fronted box.   One of our really brilliant programmers, Dougie Hynes, only used white wires.   This made updating his communications set ups a nightmare for the rest of us more normal people.  

It was such fun, though.   It was a young industry, and we were constantly exposed to the most amazing new ideas and always challenged.

Looking back, it moved so slowly, compared to today.    We had time to really understand each phase of what we were doing, before the next one arrived.

I worked on the mini computer side for a few years, working in binary and hex.   Minis started at 1K.   I remember the excitement when the NCR 399 moved from 8K to 16K, and then 32K.   We were developing systems for municipalities and 32K gave us enormous flexibility.

Now my iPad can’t update because I only have 3.6 GB available, and I need 4.6!

Those were the days……

Hope to see you at MWOT.

Links, References and Notes

www.bcx.co.za
Business Connexion:Accsys
http://www.mwotafrica.com/mwot-tv/
#MWOTAfrica

email:      tschroenn@accsys.co.za
twitter:   @TerylSchroenn


Note


Thank you for reading Teryl@Work.   Should you wish to use any of the material, please acknowledge this blog as the source
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

It's all about the service... Gaining & Retaining Clients

Retaining and gaining customers has become increasingly challenging.  As customers we have abundant choice and it is so easy to comparative shop. We talk about great service We talk about the extra mile We talk about the attitude We talk about customer perception We talk about customer expectation We talk about meeting customer needs We talk about the tangible vs intangible We talk about the client experience So what makes a customer feel that they have received outstanding service?   What makes it a soft skill, rather than a science, is that we are all so different and people in services and sales need to read each situation and act accordingly. In a restaurant, if my chair is constantly bumped by the waitrons going past, no matter how great the food, my perception is negative.  My family don’t even notice the bumps.. A few years ago, I was lucky enough to visit Greece and Turkey. In Istanbul, we were wandering around one of the many fan...
Post a Comment
Read more

When did having it all become doing it all?

Or being all things to all people… Ruth Bader Ginsburg , U.S. Supreme Court Justice: “You can’t have it all at once. Over my lifespan, I think I have had it all. But in different periods of time, things were rough.” As a mother, a wife and a business woman, I have thought a great deal about this.    My article about #OutsideWork generated some personal mail that asked me, inter alia: “How?” “What do I need to do to satisfy everybody that needs my full attention when I am with them?”  My children, my boss, my partner – they all need me to be the best that I can be, and I am barely keeping my head above water.” “I don’t want to be selfish, but there is no time for me.” And a poignant comment: “This article made me remember that there must be time for “self” but I am not finding it.  I am mentally and emotionally exhausted and nobody seems to care” There is no one answer.  It’s different for those in a committed partnership, compared to sing...
Post a Comment
Read more