Please congratulate me

[LisaGreen]

Oh how I remember those fun days of muddling through cryptic Job Control Language statements to run my simulations. We had a little Fortran based program called CSMP, Continuous System Modeling Program, that I had fun with. So good in fact that my manager had to call me in and ask why I had used 2 HOURS of CPU time on our 370's and 303X's in the past month. Most jobs ran in under 3 seconds or so. Seems his budget didn't account for people actually simulating all the variables in a Monte Carlo systems analysis. <sigh>
Things got much nicer when I got away from the mainframe that used CMS/SPF and moved to VM/360 and REXX! Mike Cowlishaw quickly became our hero when he published that language.

Did you read that NASA is looking for fortran programmers?

[LisaGreen]

Did you see this???

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-39803425" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Lisa

[AlanMiller]

Did you read that NASA is looking for fortran programmers?

I do remember being able to speed up Fortran programs by writing the I/O routines in assembly language. But I think their I/O might have advanced more than a little since then, and my software improvements might be somewhat redundant. And I'm an Aussie, so ineligible for a cut of the lucre.

Alan

[PJ_in_FL]

Did you see this???

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-39803425" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Lisa

LOL!

My geek days are long past. Now I just spend my days helping build the hardware the code runs on. Much easier and I don't want to lose any more hair from pulling it out when the compiler abends on every line of code.

[John Gray]

I'm an Aussie, so ineligible for a cut of the lucre.

It's hardly lucre, more like petty cash!
I seem to remember a Linda Evangelista quotation on this topic...

[kdock]

Chris:

[AlanMiller]

It's hardly lucre, more like petty cash!

I'd have to agree. And it's one thing wanting something for nothing; NASA is expecting 10 to 10,000 times faster ... for (next to) nothing! "Bon chance", I'd say.

Alan

[ChrisGreaves]

... ask why I had used 2 HOURS of CPU time on our 370's and 303X's in the past month. ...

Brings back memories.
I remember, one night (2am to 6am was my time slot) running my "matrix determinant calculator" program and then running it a second time to see if it came up with the same answer ("Do the six holes in the output cards match up?").
Given that I used to choose best-of-three or best-of-five when doing it with pencil and paper, I was amazed that the computer was so clever (laugh) to get the same answer twice in a row, that I ran the program twenty times that night, trying to see if it would make a mistake, as I did, when it got tired.

So you see, I was pretty naive back then, too!

Cheers
Chris

[ChrisGreaves]

I congratulate you Chris. Did you celebrate by eating a tub of ice cream? You should have!

Thanks Skitterbug.
Yes, I guess I should have, except for circumstances :-

(1) I am not sure of the exact day in May 1967, so I would have had to eat a 2-litre brick of ice-cream every day in May, just to be sure and
(2) I am seriously trying to lose weight, so nowadays I buy a two-litre brick of Chapman's Butterscotch Ripple only on days when I discover that my ten-day running average⁽¹⁾ has dropped another pound.

Cheers
Chris
⁽¹⁾ Don'r get smart with me! You know exactly what is meant by a running average!

[ChrisGreaves]

...7 using the Watfor implementation of Fortran IV.

I remember WatFor.
In September 1982 i arrived in Toronto and found a Waterloo interpreter of APL on a Commodore computer that was, in essence, a keyboard that I could fit into my briefcase.
In Adelaide we had spent three years developing APL on a good-old 96KB ICL 1903A, and here was a MUCH flashier APL, that fit into my briefcase ...

Sigh!

[ChrisGreaves]

Nostalgia isn't what it used to be...

Yes it is, and I can still remember when it used to be what it was!

I also recall a Burroughs 6700 that had to "run up" for seven hours. We thought it was "getting up to speed", but now I suspect that most of that seven hours was spent in Formatting the new disk or drum.
Cheers
Chris

[ChrisGreaves]

Did you see this??? http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-39803425" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; Lisa

I liked this bit:-
Significant improvements could be gained just by simplifying a heavily used sub-routine so it runs a few milliseconds faster, said Nasa on the webpage describing the competition. If the routine is called millions of times during a simulation this could "significantly" trim testing times, it added.

Just think, if you run the code millions of times, you could save ... SECONDS!

Quentin Van Abbe and I re-wrote some code in the BHP payroll program for the IBM 1401.
Our boss, Bob Moon, listened politely, then sent us away to multiply our loop-savings by the number of employees at BHP multiplied by 26 pay-periods per year.
He was a great teacher was Bob ...

Cheers
Chris

[Argus]

This month marks my fifty years in programming computers.
May 1967.
FORTRAN II on an IBM 1620 at the University of Western Australia.
(Later on I found and purchased a copy of Daniel D. McCracken's book)
Punched cards.
No printing on the output.
No printers.
This means I am noe entring my fifty-first year of maiking the moost appauling errours and mithtakes.

Congratulations, Chris!
(And thank you for making me feel youngish for a second or two. )
(Pascal on BSD Unix, SunOS, Ultrix etc. (and only because it was compulsory) an eon after you.)
(Printers: Reminds me about the discussions; people complaining about the printers, then some would say that they had to run 4 floors up & down to get to The printer, and then others would chime in: printer?)

[Skitterbug]

I congratulate you Chris. Did you celebrate by eating a tub of ice cream? You should have!

Thanks Skitterbug.
Yes, I guess I should have, except for circumstances :-

(1) I am not sure of the exact day in May 1967, so I would have had to eat a 2-litre brick of ice-cream every day in May, just to be sure and
(2) I am seriously trying to lose weight, so nowadays I buy a two-litre brick of Chapman's Butterscotch Ripple only on days when I discover that my ten-day running average⁽¹⁾ has dropped another pound.

Cheers
Chris
⁽¹⁾ Don'r get smart with me! You know exactly what is meant by a running average!

(GASP) I never would do a thing like that........

I do wish you the best of luck in the 'weight' department! Hope it doesn't take long!

[AlanMiller]

(Printers: Reminds me about the discussions; people complaining about the printers, then some would say that they had to run 4 floors up & down to get to The printer, and then others would chime in: printer?)

Printers? We used to dream of owning a printer!
We had to supply our own chisel bits to get our output carved into stone slabs. Today's younguns have no idea what carting around a tablet means!


Alan

[ChrisGreaves]

... they had to run 4 floors up & down to get to The printer, and then others would chime in: printer?)

yep!
Also submitting job-decks by 10a.m. each morning so that the van driver could pick them up and drive them to the computer five miles away ...
Cheers
Chris

[ChrisGreaves]

Printers? We used to dream of owning a printer!

Oh dear.
Does this mean i have to track down The Four Yorkshiremen Sketch and then try to lure Hans into watching it again, again?

Cheers
Chris