25 years ago on this day

[sasguru]

These things even out sg. Look at how much they are giving you now for spending most of your working day coming on here and talking puerile nonsense from the retard perspective.

Indeed, makes you sick doesn't it?

[OwlHoot]

Did you slash the zero or the Oh?

Slashing the Oh was an IBM affectation, as I recall - Everyone else slashed the zero, but IBMers had to be different!

[Sysman]

I started about 30 years ago, writing COBOL programs and submitting stacks of punch cards to be run overnight on an ICL 1900.

And I do mean *writing* - We'd write the code, letter by letter, on squared sheets for secretaries to use in preparing the cards.

The shock in my first VMS job was that the place didn't have any print layout sheets. Managed to scrounge a couple from a chap who kept some safely locked away. It was like walking into a different world, I hated it, and I promptly started distributing my CV again.

[Cyberman]

Yes, and you are now more of a "banker" than ever.

More of a banker than Sir Fred the shred. At least I have a banking degree.

[sasguru]

More of a banker than Sir Fred the shred. At least I have a banking degree.

What's the exact title of this degree?

[TimberWolf]

Seeing 2001 A Space Odyssey the other day, A. C. Clark seems to have been at least 100 years out. E.g. A Moon base, mission to Jupiter, AI machine capable of singing Daisy, Daisy...

[bobhope]

C on Sunos 4.

15 years coming up for me soon. Aggh, how did that happen?

[OwlHoot]

My first full-time job paid me about 1000 quid a year as a banker which gave me the princely sum of net 47 quid in my first month.

£47 quid a month?!

Did you sit at a tall desk writing entries in a ledger book with a quill pen?

[Sysman]

£1500 /year for me... £30/week... dear dead days beyond recall.

I think my first "proper job" paid £2500 a year, but I had to make the leap from weekly pay with paid overtime to monthly pay without paid overtime. It took a long time before I could afford to buy another car.

That job also brought the first insult from the tax man. My weekly paid job gave me a better tax code to account for the cost of "industrial work clothing" (boots, jeans, donkey jacket), but I lost that for the "privilege" of knackering suits by wearing them to work.

[MPwannadecentincome]

Ah VAX/VMS with EDT and RMS indexed files and FDL and VAX FORTRAN with structured records and CLI - it was so much simpler then!