E-Cigarette Forum Discussion Thread

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LibertariaNate

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I'm more of a "jack of all trades, master of none" type.

While I've completed many projects in various programming languages, I wouldn't dream of inferring I'm particularly knowledgeable. In fact, the more I learn, the more I realize I don't know jack. It can be depressing at times.

The same goes for Cisco IOS.

Funny you should mention VMWare... I also maintain several VMWare ESXi servers.
 

Neriah

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DC2

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And my first project in school was on punch cards.
Maybe you can answer a question for me?

When Moses parted the Red Sea, were some of the people hesitant to cross?
I would have thought there were some folks that didn't have enough faith.

Anyway, it's something that always crossed my mind.
I just thought maybe you could shed some light on that question.
:D
 

hobotivo

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Oh my goodness. How many of "us" are there in this thread?
...
And my first project in school was on punch cards. :p
There must be a few of us by the looks of it. :)

I would've hated to have lost you to a Mainframe falling on your lap.
Hey, mainframes have got pretty small now. A z10 isn't much bigger than a (pretty big) fridge/freezer. That's nothing compared with how they used to be. The first really big system I worked on (for AU's biggest bank) the CPUs and core (yes core) took up a whole floor, there was another floor of DASD (disks) another of tape stuff and another of printers and more tape library.

I avoid mainframes. They scare me...
I could never trust anything other than a mainframe with serious work. I'm extremely suspicious of any computer that plugs into a wall! What if somebody tripped over the cord and pulled it out?


HEY!!! You're mean! I'm not that old, unfortunately I'm a long long way away from retirement. Not sure why they had us do punch cards, not like any of us were likely to ever use them on the job. Although, my first job offer was at a dos shop. I actually accepted the job and a week later had a panic attack and reneged.

Hmm, I really did work with punch cards in the beginning, although even then they were on the way out. We'd code on coding sheets at our desks (no terminals in those days, except the operator consoles) and then get the keypunch operators to punch the cards, then drop 'em down to the computer room to get them run through the compiler, which would often be overnight, unless the op was a good mate. Then correct errors, repeat until we got a clean compile, then attempt a run. It really made you code super carefully, you'd have design walkthroughs and code walkthroughs before your code even got near a computer! We were extremely disciplined, we HAD to be!

Do you mean DOS as in mainframe DOS (eg,DOS/360, DOS/VS) or PC DOS?

Generally speaking I'm surprised at people who don't want to work on mainframes... They remain at the cutting edge of technology and the money is very (VERY) good if you really know your stuff.

I'm starting to regret retiring, I want my mainframe back. :(

Cheers
 

MustangSallie

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Maybe you can answer a question for me?

When Moses parted the Red Sea, were some of the people hesitant to cross?
I would have thought there were some folks that didn't have enough faith.

Anyway, it's something that always crossed my mind.
I just thought maybe you could shed some light on that question.
:D


:laugh::laugh::laugh::laugh::laugh::lol::lol::lol::lol::lol::lol::lol: :glare:
 

MustangSallie

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There must be a few of us by the looks of it. :)
Do you mean DOS as in mainframe DOS (eg,DOS/360, DOS/VS) or PC DOS?


DOS as in mainframe DOS. Gulp. But it was at a hospital and of course they were notorious for being the last to upgrade anything for a whole host of reasons, the biggest I would think being IT budget.

My husband did work for quite some time on coding sheets and punch cards (He's a LOT older than I am :) ). They used to draw elaborate pictures on the top so if they dropped them, they'd be able to get them back in the correct order.

And I should add, we did have to use coding sheets all throughout school because our lab time was short and mainframe processing was expensive. Nothing like trying to play computer in your head.
 
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LibertariaNate

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I could never trust anything other than a mainframe with serious work. I'm extremely suspicious of any computer that plugs into a wall! What if somebody tripped over the cord and pulled it out?

That's why God invented battery backups. ;) I know this in jest, but you'd really have to go out of your way "trip" over my UPS, and even more out of your way to trip over the computer power cable. If you did, I'd think you were trying to on purpose. :)

Hmm, I really did work with punch cards in the beginning, although even then they were on the way out. We'd code on coding sheets at our desks (no terminals in those days, except the operator consoles) and then get the keypunch operators to punch the cards, then drop 'em down to the computer room to get them run through the compiler, which would often be overnight, unless the op was a good mate. Then correct errors, repeat until we got a clean compile, then attempt a run. It really made you code super carefully, you'd have design walkthroughs and code walkthroughs before your code even got near a computer! We were extremely disciplined, we HAD to be!

I imagine so. You know, since every byte came at a premium. Now we have GUIs with squiggly lines if a word is misspelled, syntax is incorrect, undeclared variables... Programs practically write themselves. It takes all of 5 seconds to compile even some of the most complex code. I'd like to believe that just because I can make something complex or bloated it doesn't mean I do. I certainly don't try to anyway. I understand not everyone is rocking a six-core i7 with 24GB of memory. :)
 
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hobotivo

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My husband did work for quite some time on coding sheets and punch cards (He's a LOT older than I am :) ). They used to draw elaborate pictures on the top so if they dropped them, they'd be able to get them back in the correct order.

For fun I once wrote a program in PL/I where you could remove the first card from the deck, shuffle the remaining cards then replace the first card and it would still run correctly. I think it was for the "Chess Knight's Tour" problem, but I can't remember now for sure.

(By the way, if your husband had used columns 73-80 as sequence fields he could have just run the deck through a card sorter if the deck was dropped.)

Cheers
 

MustangSallie

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(By the way, if your husband had used columns 73-80 as sequence fields he could have just run the deck through a card sorter if the deck was dropped.)

Hmmm, interesting. He seemed to know all the tricks, I'll have to ask him about this when I talk to him this evening.
 

MustangSallie

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Now we have GUIs with squiggly lines if a word is misspelled, syntax is incorrect, undeclared variables...

Funny, I was thinking about this just the other day. I think I've become very lazy with my progression through my mainframe days to now. Sometimes I know it isn't going to compile, but my time is more expensive these days than that of the computer so I just let it do it's thing. :)
 

hobotivo

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Hmmm, interesting. He seemed to know all the tricks, I'll have to ask him about this when I talk to him this evening.

Lots of people never bothered with the sequence field, used to be a bit of a pain sometimes. You had to initially start with numeric increments of 100 so you had "space" to add more statements if you found you needed them, those additions would use increments of 10 so there were further slots available for more corrections if necessary. Then you'd run out altogether and have to run the deck through a utility to repunch the whole deck again with new 100 increments. It all became a bit of a nuisance. That's one aspect of mainframes I don't miss, but I'm glad I was there at the time, I'm a better programmer because of it.

Cheers
 

hobotivo

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That's why God invented battery backups. ;)

Battery backups are for pussies. Try a pair of 1,000KVA generators and 10,000 gallons of diesel! :)

Programs practically write themselves.
Yep, been playing with Xcode on the mac and just creating a new project creates a runnable application. (Admittedly it doesn't do much.) Thought I might write one of them there app thingies in my retirement and get rich!

Actually, despite my mainframe dinosaur status I've always tried to stay up with "micro-computing" as we used to call it. I had one of the first 12 Apple 2 computers imported into Australia in 1978, with 32K of RAM and one SS/SD floppy. It cost me 4 months of a programmers salary, equivalent to maybe $30K in today's money. I was doing my degree at the time and I was the only student out of 300 in my year who had their own computer. No queueing in the lab for me :)

I understand not everyone is rocking a six-core i7 with 24GB of memory. :)
Have you seen the z/Enterprise 196? Up to 96 5.2GHz water cooled cores and 3 TB of memory... When I win the lottery! :)

Cheers
 
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