[LINK] Yearly Predictions

[Roger Clarke]

At 19:02 +1100 8/12/06, Jim Birch wrote:
>I expect this kind of thing won't be making a comeback (again)
>http://www.facade.com/legacy/punchcard/?val=HELLO%20LINKERS

Ah, reminiscences.

The only program I ever wrote that worked to spec first time and 
never needed any de-bugging or correcting was ...

Do while there are pairs of cards in the card-reader:
    Read two cards, each of 80 columns
    Concetenate the first card and the first 52 columns of the second
    Write a 132-column line on the line-printer

(That's reasonable pseudo-code, by the way).

It sounds easy (8 *chars* of APL maybe? - maybe not, because APL was 
I/O-poor;  30 chars of grep?;  5 lines of Pascal?).  But it still 
took a remarkable number of cards full of obligatory lines of COBOL - 
40 or so?

We're talking 1971, by the way.

-- 
Roger Clarke                  http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/

Xamax Consultancy Pty Ltd      78 Sidaway St, Chapman ACT 2611 AUSTRALIA
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Visiting Professor in Info Science & Eng  Australian National University
Visiting Professor in the eCommerce Program      University of Hong Kong
Visiting Professor in the Cyberspace Law & Policy Centre      Uni of NSW