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ArishMell · 70-79, M
When I was at school in the 1960s we were given what I now think was a pilot maths syllabus called "School Mathematics Project"
Like most school maths education, we were never told why anyone might use the stuff, but this was even more abstract than most, and it sniffily derided the maths most people use professionally, "traditional" as trying to patronise it.
However among its off-the-wall topics was one whose purpose we were never told at the time, but which I now realise was important to using the ginormous mainframe computers that very large organisations were beginning to afford: Binary and Hexadecimal Arithmetic.
I didn't touch a computer till 1989, when new employment brought me into battle with them, and the first course I was given was on MS-DOS! many of our work computers were for controlling electronic measuring instruments using locally-written, BASIC programmes.
Not long after I bought my first, own, computer, an Amstrad PCW9512, wrote club magazine articles on it and tried to learn BASIC. The compiler was bundled with it, on a 3" floppy-disc. (Not a misprint; that was the size it used.) It also had a complier for Digital Research LOGO - a lower-level language supposedly designed to teach schoolchildren "structured programming" (and bad grammar) but I could not follow it at all!
Like most school maths education, we were never told why anyone might use the stuff, but this was even more abstract than most, and it sniffily derided the maths most people use professionally, "traditional" as trying to patronise it.
However among its off-the-wall topics was one whose purpose we were never told at the time, but which I now realise was important to using the ginormous mainframe computers that very large organisations were beginning to afford: Binary and Hexadecimal Arithmetic.
I didn't touch a computer till 1989, when new employment brought me into battle with them, and the first course I was given was on MS-DOS! many of our work computers were for controlling electronic measuring instruments using locally-written, BASIC programmes.
Not long after I bought my first, own, computer, an Amstrad PCW9512, wrote club magazine articles on it and tried to learn BASIC. The compiler was bundled with it, on a 3" floppy-disc. (Not a misprint; that was the size it used.) It also had a complier for Digital Research LOGO - a lower-level language supposedly designed to teach schoolchildren "structured programming" (and bad grammar) but I could not follow it at all!
DFDGsdfffss · M
You sound like my father.
sighmeupforthat · 46-50, M
wow, sign of the times eh? :D :D
sighmeupforthat · 46-50, M
it's your thing man.. don't let it change.
i'm the same.
and i work online much now.
progress. :D yr one of the gran-pappies as they say.
see? i'm yr underling... one of millions.
i'm the same.
and i work online much now.
progress. :D yr one of the gran-pappies as they say.
see? i'm yr underling... one of millions.