History of modern Software (Discussion)

[Nightwalker83]

Hi,

I have been wondering about this for awhile now and since there seem to be a lot of threads asking "Which language was VS, etc made in?" I thought why not start a thread that covers the whole thing. Now, you will probably think I am stupid for not knowing this but I struggle to see the connection between the very first "modern" .exe software, etc and the punch cards used in the 40s/50s (whenever it was)?

So to get the ball rolling I thought I'd ask about how computer programs progressed from the punch cards to the first exe of the 70s/80s

Nightwalker

[dilettante]

In much of Europe paper tape was used more often than cards. It also became common everywhere on minicomputers in the 1960s where card I/O was too costly.

None of that relates to programming much though. It was just a medium, a sort of offline text editor because computer time was too valuable for much online editing.

[Nightwalker83]

Ah, I guessing from there someone had the idea of putting that tape recording method into floppy disks? Likely using the same principal as the pin a gramophone reading the markings scratched the old vinyl records.

[dilettante]

Paper tape was a separate animal from magnetic tape. Hard disk preceded floppy disk by quite some time.

You could always wander through An Illustrated History of Computers.

[Nightwalker83]

It is interesting that the above site says this:

University students in the 1970's bought blank cards a linear foot at a time from the university bookstore. Each card could hold only 1 program statement. To submit your program to the mainframe, you placed your stack of cards in the hopper of a card reader. Your program would be run whenever the computer made it that far. You often submitted your deck and then went to dinner or to bed and came back later hoping to see a successful printout showing your results. Obviously, a program run in batch mode could not be interactive.

Do the modern computer/software working in the same way? How would they have created the first software package like what we are used to today?

Edit:

I found so more useful link which explain part of what I am wanting to know.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History...re_engineering
http://www.comphist.org/computing_hi...ew_page_13.htm
http://www.thocp.net/software/software.htm

[namrekka]

Hmmm...define computer first. Is a Sinclair ZX80 a computer? A 8080 based one? An IBM370?

[Nightwalker83]

Hmmm...define computer first. Is a Sinclair ZX80 a computer? A 8080 based one? An IBM370?

I don't know I have never heard of them! However, if I search hard enough I might find information about them. Although, this thread is meant for modern software discussion such as how new languages are created, etc.

[NeedSomeAnswers]

I don't know I have never heard of them

What you have never heard of a ZX80 what about the ZX Spectrum ???

They were around in the 1980's and so are more modern then mainframes, card readers & magnetic tape e.t.c.

In fact the early Sinclair's and BBC's (a computer literary funded by the BBC in the 1980's) both used Cassette tape's to load programmes. I had a BBC and i specifically remember when we got a Disk drive the Disk where slightly bigger than a CD case today but a lot thinner and actually floppy as in you could bend them.

In fact the BBC computer was made by Acorn and the chip that they developed for that computer has evolved into the ARM processor that we all use today in most of our mobile phones.

[Nightwalker83]

What you have never heard of a ZX80 what about the ZX Spectrum ???

If I have I can't remember.

[dilettante]

Are you looking for something more like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History...ming_languages instead?

[Nightwalker83]

Yeah, that is what I'm after! Thanks.