How's programming lately? If you're getting slightly bored, perhaps you should read something not so technical about VB, for example, the history part.
Do you know that computer software have been around since world war II? However, before 1975, most of the software were free, and one of the earliest computer language was BASIC. Those were the days without any PC, you have to type your program on the punch cards and then feed them to the main frames and pick up the output the next, how tedious and slow was it!
I was one of the hobbyists of BASIC back then, Bill Gates was one too! Programming back then was simple , the program is sequential and you need to type in the line numbers . However, the program can become very messy if you need to program something more complex, the line number can run to a couple of thousands, which means you have to punch a few thousand cards! A BASIC program typically looks like this 10 Let X=100 20 Let Y =200 30 Z=X+Y 40 Print Z One good thing about programming those days was that we get a lot of freebies! However, since Gates and his partner Paul Allen started commercializing BASIC, we no longer enjoy such benefits. But this is a good development because we learn to respect intellectual properties, and this will encourage creativity and innovations. True enough, with the advent of personal computers and commercialization of software, we get faster computers and more efficient software! We no longer have to use the punch cards and we can get the output of a program instantly, how nice! That' enough for today, lets go programming!
1 comment:
It was very interesting for me to read the article. Thanks for it. I like such topics and everything connected to this matter. I definitely want to read more soon.
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