[SIGCIS-Members] Call for "paper"

[Ian S. King]

Quite an interesting project.  But I must concur with others here about the
more general use of 'paper programming'.  When I took my first programming
class (FORTRAN) in the 1970s, we were taught the formal method of
flowcharting and coding sheets with the understanding that this was how the
'real world' works.  By the time I was in the 'real world', video display
terminals and editor programs had supplanted those techniques (in
confirmation of a previous statement), at least in the places where I found
'real work'.

However, I'll also mention that when I was an undergrad, I worked on a
project where I did not have regular access to the microcomputer on which
my (data collection) code would run, nor any sort of development
environment.  So I was compelled to write assembly language,
"hand-assemble" it into machine code (for example, calculating relative
branches, establishing a symbol table and the like) and keying the
resulting machine code into the computer's front panel.  It actually worked
pretty well, especially after I learned some 'real lessons' about relative
branching.  -- Ian

On Wed, Sep 2, 2015 at 9:00 AM, Dag Spicer <dspicer at computerhistory.org>
wrote:

> Woz still has his Apple II hardware and software design notes… in a
> binder, on paper, handwritten.  He has shown them to me.  The most obvious
> observation on this theme is that in the days of “cards and paper”
> computing, with its limited memory and a code-exeute-debug cycle measured
> in days, people took much longer to code and were more deliberate in
> writing software. In theory, people could write better software.  In
> practice, programmers often just spent hours and hours waiting with nothing
> to do.  (A related issue: modern-day programmers often explain their lack
> of apparent activity at times by saying “I’m compiling right now.”
> Managers invariably accept this as sensible and valid… even though it’s a
> running joke among programmers that the benefit of this explanation is that
> it really just gives them a bit of downtime to relax).
>
> A general observation about card and paper computing in the 1960s: Bob
> Bemer, I think (paraphrase): "Computers cost $600 an hour; your time (as a
> programmer) costs $12 an hour.  Guess what we’re optimising for?”
>
> Dag
> --
> Dag Spicer
> Senior Curator
> Computer History Museum
> Editorial Board, IEEE Annals of the History of Computing
> 1401 North Shoreline Boulevard
> Mountain View, CA 94043-1311
>
> Tel: +1 650 810 1035
> Fax: +1 650 810 1055
>
>
>
> On Sep 2, 2015, at 6:38 AM, dave.walden.family at gmail.com<mailto:
> dave.walden.family at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I have a vague, perhaps wrong, memory of Woz's autobiography saying he
> wrote code in notebooks for machines he was imagining.
>
> Sent from my iPad
>
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-- 
Ian S. King, MSIS, MSCS, Ph.D. Candidate
The Information School <http://ischool.uw.edu>
Dissertation: "Why the Conversation Mattered: Constructing a Sociotechnical
Narrative Through a Design Lens

Archivist, Voices From the Rwanda Tribunal <http://tribunalvoices.org>
Value Sensitive Design Research Lab <http://vsdesign.org>

University of Washington

There is an old Vulcan saying: "Only Nixon could go to China."
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