Well, I started as a young kid on an HP 2000 and even helped build a Heathkit computer (complete with 8" floppy drive - WOW!).  I've used cards, but never had to use paper tape.  I also used to be able to make space invaders or worm war on a Trash 80 with only 4k of memory...

I also helped port Advent from Unix to the HP 2000 back in the early 70's ("A hollow voice goes 'Plugh!'").

*Sigh*

Damn, you guys have been around for a while. I've heard of card readers and tape, but that was all before my time. I got into the field back in the mid 90's. 

Ya...  Too long and not enough of that time spent in fields I would have found fun.  WAY too many financial applications - I wish I could have done game design, simulators or sound processing...  Oh well.

Ever hear about those 19 year-old punk kids getting jobs at defense contractors?  That was me.

Not heard about the punk kids getting defense jobs, but have heard of the punk kids making killer games and becoming overnight millionairs. Like the creators of the game Doom.  

I've heard horror stories about game programmers being worked to death. Kinda glad that I didn't go that route. I started with C++ in college, never really touched it after that. Now, I'm starting to want to get back into it.  It would be fun to write hardware control applications... If I do, the first one I'd creating is a control application for my Boss DR-880.  Never really understood why Boss does not create cool software for their hardware devices like Line6 does.

Let me give you a pointer there.

*dontdoit

Feel free to keep the complimentary triple-dereferenced pointer below as well.

***becan
 

HA... Yeah that is the one thing I DO NOT MISS about C++ and C is pointers.  Good lord! C# is by far my favorite language.  When I was in college, I had created some small little console app.  It was like some simple input statement to read a key and print a key. Compiled it, ran it. All of a sudden the printer on my desk just started printing a bunch of jumblie goop.  Not sure how I did it but I somehow got into some memory I should not have gotten into.

BTW, what is the deal with "becan" around here? Everyone is always making some reference to it.

Alan Parsons says RAM is everything.

The Coffee House says becan is everything.

It's just something you must accept.  LOL

You know how an "in" joke requires explanation in order for it to be funny?  Well, sometimes the explanation is so much trouble and the humor has so little payoff that it's not all that funny in the end. 

In the CH, there have been "special" moments.  You know the kind.  It's like the time you opened the cabinet and a can of beans fell on your head, knocking you to the floor in front of your In Laws, who took it as confirmation of their views of your intelligence.  It stands out in your memory.  It gets repeated ad nauseum by the In Laws.  References to it take on a life of their own until they eclipse the original event itself.

Becan.  It's like that.  It's 20-40% funnier than the original "special" moment.

(Do a search through the CH on "20-40%" sometime.  It's special, too.)

How long has the inside joke been going on?