... just like I didn't know until told a few years ago about punchcards, and have no idea how computers were programmed before that.
moto
FYI.
Before punchcards computers needed to be programmed manually if my info is correct though. Often the programmers would assemble their programs themselves into a binary word stream. Operators then manually programmed the word stream into the computer: physical settings switches to one or zero for each bit in the word and some kind of enter button to transfer the word to memory. I'm using the term word here as at that time there was no standard yet for the size of words.
I have not used these myself. The oldest I used was a mainframe with a room full of terminals connected to it.
greets,
Staf.
