linuxcaffe; become peripheraly involved !

[John Macdonald]

On Wed, Feb 09, 2005 at 03:42:34PM -0500, Lennart Sorensen wrote:
>  [ ... ]
> They used to be some of the machines serving CS classes at U of Waterloo
> back in the late 80s.  I personally can't imagine a class of students
> all trying to compile their assignments on one of these at the same
> time.  I have been told it was a slow process.  Checking your syntax
> carefully first before asking for a compile was apparently a good idea.

Ah, you youngsters had it easy!  I recall when I had to
carefully check my syntax. Then I'd put the card deck into
the collection box.  Once a week a courier came by to collect
the decks and take them to the remote high school that had
the computer.  The same courier returned the printouts of the
previous week's jobs.  The pickup/dropoff only took a minute
or two, so each syntax error that you didn't find added two
weeks to the time before you got to actually debug the program.

(... and, it was uphill both ways with 10 feet of snow on
the ground. :-)

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