|
Post by tardis on Sept 18, 2007 13:32:24 GMT -4
Greetings! This is my first post (which sounds so very much like a SlashDot-ism) and have been enjoying the discussions. In IDW's defense, his (mis)use of "E" may have been caused by an early exposure to Fortrash...um...Fortran. A truly invidious language that can cause brain damage and did make use of the letter "E" to show an exponent.
Add me to the bandwagon of those who learned to type on an actual typewriter (me, back in 1975) and had no problems typing super- and subscripts. As for my particulars: I'm a big fan of NASA, an amateur astronomer and (obviously) a great fan of Dr. Who (reincarnation #4 by preference). I'm also a big enough geek that while watching "Apollo 13", I kept whispering to my husband, "That's wrong......that didn't happen that way....wait a minute! Mattingly found out he wasn't flying the mission by hearing it on the radio!...." Surprisingly, my husband still speaks to me, but then he's a fellow geek.
Thank you all again for some very informative writing!
|
|
|
Post by LunarOrbit on Sept 18, 2007 13:52:51 GMT -4
Welcome, Tardis!
|
|
Al Johnston
"Cheer up!" they said, "It could be worse!" So I did, and it was.
Posts: 1,453
|
Post by Al Johnston on Sept 18, 2007 14:03:59 GMT -4
Have a Jelly Baby ;D
|
|
Jason
Pluto
May all your hits be crits
Posts: 5,579
|
Post by Jason on Sept 18, 2007 14:31:50 GMT -4
"It's true then, what they say. The Evil One does eat babies!"
|
|
|
Post by gillianren on Sept 18, 2007 14:40:47 GMT -4
They still taught typing on typewriters at my high school when I was in grade 9 (1989-90). The next year the typing room was turned into a computer lab. My school still had both when I graduated in 1995. I never took typing, because I'd learned how when I was in elementary school, but a lot of my friends did.
|
|
|
Post by LunarOrbit on Sept 18, 2007 14:47:11 GMT -4
I think my high school used the typing teacher's salary to buy the computers because I don't remember her being there when I was in grade 10...
|
|
Bob B.
Bob the Excel Guru?
Posts: 3,072
|
Post by Bob B. on Sept 18, 2007 15:10:18 GMT -4
I’m guessing that learning to type on a typewriter may not be all that unusual. If a school already has typewriters from days gone past, then why not use them. It’s certainly cheaper then buying a room full of PCs. The big difference between today and when I learned is that I continued to use a typewriter for a couple decades after I first learned. Today’s students may learn on a typewriter but then never touch one again. Instead they bang away on computer keyboards.
|
|
Jason
Pluto
May all your hits be crits
Posts: 5,579
|
Post by Jason on Sept 18, 2007 15:16:36 GMT -4
I’m guessing that learning to type on a typewriter may not be all that unusual. If a school already has typewriters from days gone past, then why not use them. Ribbons.
|
|
|
Post by JayUtah on Sept 18, 2007 15:17:11 GMT -4
I'm thankful every day for learning to type on a manual typewriter, and to program on the 029 card punch. You learn to type much more accurately when mistakes have real consequences. Especially on the latter, you can't put the chip back in the hole no matter how fervently you want.
|
|
Jason
Pluto
May all your hits be crits
Posts: 5,579
|
Post by Jason on Sept 18, 2007 15:31:29 GMT -4
Alas, I learned to type on typewriters with built-in correction tape.
|
|
Bob B.
Bob the Excel Guru?
Posts: 3,072
|
Post by Bob B. on Sept 18, 2007 16:29:39 GMT -4
Ribbons are still obtainable, aren't they?
|
|
Jason
Pluto
May all your hits be crits
Posts: 5,579
|
Post by Jason on Sept 18, 2007 16:37:32 GMT -4
Yeah, but they're much more rare than they used to be. There are probably many models that they simply don't make the ribbons for any more.
|
|
|
Post by tardis on Sept 18, 2007 16:37:34 GMT -4
Thank you, LunarOrbit! And ta very much, Al. I've a fondness for the red ones, so I hope you don't mind if I browse through the bag a bit.
And don't forget, Jay, the wonderful negative reinforcement you used to get when you *did* punch a card wrong. Saying that your "program barfed" used to really have meaning. I remember that frustration well.
|
|
|
Post by JayUtah on Sept 18, 2007 17:09:13 GMT -4
Oh, the woes of mistyping. But we still have that. The worst is miskeying the last character of a complicated engineering formula. As soon as you make a mistake on a card, the entire card is useless as a program step, but still useful as a notecard or bookmark.
In Fortran the exponentiation operator is **. So 3.3 to the fifth power is written 3.3**5. The "e" notation (or "d" for double-precision) is for real-valued literals in the way we've been using it here and with IDW. In Fortran 3.3e+5 means "a real number having the value 3.3 times ten to the 5th power." Some Fortran dialects do not require the explicit sign on the exponent.
|
|
|
Post by Joe Durnavich on Sept 18, 2007 17:46:11 GMT -4
I'm thankful every day for learning to type on a manual typewriter, and to program on the 029 card punch.
I loved the keyboards on those card punches. And, oh, the tactile feedback: THUNK! THUNK! THUNK!
|
|