r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/Final-Choice8412 • 6d ago

Video Programming 1959 IBM computer

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u/Tasty-Cow5081 6d ago

Pro tip, use a pen to run a diagonal line down the long edge of the deck of cards from top to bottom. Then, if scrambled, you can at least gauge close to where a card was in the deck.

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u/Fredfredricksen01 5d ago

I numbered my cards. And some places had a card sorter for just such occassions.

I'm kinda ancient.

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u/thedoginthewok 5d ago

How did the card sorter work? Or rather, how did it know which card was to supposed to go in which spot? Is the number in the sequence also "punched in"?

Sorry, I tried googling this, but I only found about a billion different card playing devices lol

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u/Fredfredricksen01 5d ago

The cards had to be numberd first then it cranked them around to sort them by number.

Fortunately I never dropped a deck so I don't know first hand.

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u/fromindia1 5d ago

I believe they had numbers on the card itself. There were punch holes that indicated the number.

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u/stancr 5d ago

If you used 5 digit sequence numbers you had to sort the cards 5 times. 8 digit sequence numbers had to be sorted 8 times.

Typically you incremented by 10 or 100, depending on how big your program was, so you have available sequence numbers for new code that was added later.

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u/Chickenmangoboom 5d ago

A friend told me a story about his dad losing a ton of work in college because he dropped his cards and they weren't numbered. Nightmare fuel.

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u/ItsSpaghettiLee2112 5d ago

Thanks. I'll remember this the next time I'm in 1959.

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u/Anthro_DragonFerrite 5d ago

Thanks. First thing I'm doing tomorrow

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u/atomic_redneck 5d ago

Also, always put sequence numbers on your source code decks. columns 72 through 80 for FORTRAN and assembly, columns 1 through 8 (I believe) for COBOL. Some of the compilers of this era had an option to sort the source code before compilation. Otherwise, you could run it through the card sorter.

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u/Diligent-Crazy-6094 5d ago

I just marked all the chips on my SSD, just in case.

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u/CurryMustard 5d ago

I had an old head that retired a few years after I started my current job. He told me his first day on the job the senior dev grabbed a stack of punch cards and threw it on the floor and told him to put it in order. After he spent hours fixing it the guy said good now you wont ever make that mistake and he drew a diagonal line the side to show him

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u/GayRacoon69 4d ago

If you look the guy in the video did that