On the passing of Steve Jobs

[J the D]

I remember when the first Apple computers were introduced onto the hobby market as kits, crude and lacking a keyboard and monitor but later gaining these attributes. Then the Apple I was released and the real beginning of home or micro-computing was born. The reason I remember, and I suspect that Craig shares many of the same memories as I do, is because at the time I was attending university for my BSEE, learning assembly language on an DEC PDP-11, and hated just about every freekin minute of it. I was also working on an IBM-360 and a Burroughs B6700 programming in Fortran IV, a little ALGOL and COBOL. When Basic was introduced along with the Apple operating system, the future of individual computing (ie. not associated with a large institution) became established.

 

 

Sorry, Andy, but your timing is a little off. I was doing programs in BASIC in the '70s before Jobs and the Woz got together in their garage. What was introduced with the Apple operating system was a BASIC assembler.

 

In 1982 I bought an Apple III to emulate an Apple II for the express purpose of running Visicalc, the predecessor to Lotus 1-2-3 and Excel.

 

I also had experience with FORTRAN and COBOL on the IBM 360. Then had to learn RPG for the IBM 36/38 platform. Gave all that up went I got my CPA certificate without any regrets.

[StratGuy22]

We see further because we stand on the shoulders of giants.



Thanks for everything Steve Jobs

RIP

[agedhorse]

Sorry, Andy, but your timing is a little off. I was doing programs in BASIC in the '70s before Jobs and the Woz got together in their garage. What was introduced with the Apple operating system was a BASIC assembler. In 1982 I bought an Apple III to emulate an Apple II for the express purpose of running Visicalc, the predecessor to Lotus 1-2-3 and Excel. I also had experience with FORTRAN and COBOL on the IBM 360. Then had to learn RPG for the IBM 36/38 platform. Gave all that up went I got my CPA certificate without any regrets.

My wording was perhaps confusing. Basic was available as a compiled language for larger computers but when Basic and the Apple worked together via an assembler/compiler, that opened up a whole new world of making a "personal" computer a more powerful tool to a MUCH wider group of people. Basic was nothing more than a stripped down Fortran, and other languages like HPL closely followed or even emulated the Basic platform.

I forgot, I did learn some RPG2. Another horrible language IMO.

I haven't done any programming in probably 20 years but have to understand the basic logic and approach so that I can develop products with a software component and not look like a stupid old fart to the (younger) digital/software engineers.

[RoadRanger]

Basic interpreter in ROM on the Apple II, not assembler or compiler. The IBMPC also had a basic interpreter in ROM. Basic compilers came to the PC later on - but the first Basic language implementations in the mid 60's were compilers:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dartmouth_BASIC

Strangely enough two offices down from me is one of the guys who was at Dartmouth at Basic's beginnings (he's 72 I think?).

[Consume]

It's funny AgedHorse - my dad worked as a Mainframe guy for 35 years before he started a Contracting company in the 90's. He was trained by IBM back in the 60's - he said back then there were no degrees - you actually went and took a 16 week course on the Mainframe you were going to be using and you were trained by IBM trainers. COBOL, Fourtran, all that stuff. Remember the Card readers? 7-track R2R's for Data storage and "Disc-packs & readers" that looked like a stack of gray Plexiglas records with about a 1/2" gap between them? I grew up around all that kind of stuff, because dad used to take us to work with him late at night some times. He also had a terminal at the house with a phone coupler in his office, and then when Apple came out, he bought one of those... and he bought my brother and I a IIe and printer when that came out; so I was defintiely an "Apple kid". We grew up hearing about people like Jobs, Wozniak, and one of my Dad's favorites - H. Ross Perot - long before most people had. So my brother and I were Geeky Metalheads. LOL

[agedhorse]

Basic interpreter in ROM on the Apple II, not assembler or compiler. The IBMPC also had a basic interpreter in ROM. Basic compilers came to the PC later on - but the first Basic language implementations in the mid 60's were compilers: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dartmouth_BASIC Strangely enough two offices down from me is one of the guys who was at Dartmouth at Basic's beginnings (he's 72 I think?).

 

 

That kind of sounds kind of familiar, I know the HPL interpreter for the HP 9800 series (I developed some early CNC code on a 9825 back in the middle 70's) so all that all makes sense.

 

You guys have to remember, that was a very long time ago

[agedhorse]

It's funny AgedHorse - my dad worked as a Mainframe guy for 35 years before he started a Contracting company in the 90's. He was trained by IBM back in the 60's - he said back then there were no degrees - you actually went and took a 16 week course on the Mainframe you were going to be using and you were trained by IBM trainers. COBOL, Fourtran, all that stuff. Remember the Card readers? 7-track R2R's for Data storage and "Disc-packs & readers" that looked like a stack of gray Plexiglas records with about a 1/2" gap between them? I grew up around all that kind of stuff, because dad used to take us to work with him late at night some times. He also had a terminal at the house with a phone coupler in his office, and then when Apple came out, he bought one of those... and he bought my brother and I a IIe and printer when that came out; so I was defintiely an "Apple kid". We grew up hearing about people like Jobs, Wozniak, and one of my Dad's favorites - H. Ross Perot - long before most people had. So my brother and I were Geeky Metalheads. LOL

I recall there being both a 7 track and 9 track mag tape format, and the 9 track remained the standard for mailing list managers well into the 90's. Big and heavy but very robust. I also remember the multi-platter disc packs, the paper tape punch/reader and card punch/reader systems and I do remember the TTY and acoustic phone couplers that operated on something like 300 baud. The machine rooms were warm (the machines themselves were cooled through the floor and exhausted in the room) and noisy. Line printers (using continuous stainless bands or chains) could print well over 1000 lines per minute on 132 character wide paper. Watching one of those things work was amazing.

It was an elite world, you had to have money to do anything with a computer outside of the structured work environment. My dad did his fair share of programming as a navigation controls engineer for JPL, he helped get us to Mars and (foolishly) didn't even ask for directions. My engineering partner was a data acquisition engineer developing test jigs for the Apollo program. I think he still programs in machine languages. (he's a geek's geek).

[Axisplayer]

I started programming the 360's with removable platters in a university shared resources environment in 1971. Fortran and COBOL on Hollerith punch cards. Drop the stack off one day and three days later get a printout from the run. I think the removable platter stacks were 200 MB each, which seemed HUGE at the time. When the 370's came out, we were thrilled. When I was finally able to buy my first 8088 computer I thought it was unbelievable to have that much power in my own home. Who would ever need more than that?

[stix 518]

AH, you say two home runs in a lifetime is exceptional, for Mr. Jobs two was just the beginning...

Apple/Mac
Pixar
IPhone
IPad

Any one of these would have made a man or woman rich beyond their wildest dreams and provide them the luxury of being called a "visionary". Each being a "home run". What do you call it, other than the Midas Touch, when it seems that everything you touch turns to gold. Oh, I'm sure he had his failures and, despite all his successes, I'm sure they burned him to his core. But he was a driven man, right to the end. As indicated previously, I am in no way an Apple affacionado and don't own one piece of Apple merchandise, but I can recognize true genius and appreciate someone having an exceptional vision; and these are only two of the many attributes that Mr. Jobs had a great abundance of... notwithstanding the ability to find the right people to help bring his dreams to reality, which sometimes is just as important as having the dream to begin with. A true iconic success story. And, like it has already been said, despite all of his wealth, vision and access, his health still was the defining factor that took him in the prime of his life. A shame really. Who knows what else that brilliant mind could have devised for our future given more time.

Stix

[agedhorse]

AH, you say two home runs in a lifetime is exceptional, for Mr. Jobs two was just the beginning... Apple/Mac Pixar IPhone IPad Stix

 

 

Good point, I was referring primarily to Apple and Pixar but frankly your examples are probably more like home runs than anything else too, so multiple home runs they are. Don't forget the I-Pod along with I-Tunes combination... maybe the most successful?