Don't teach the little beggars Office, teach them to code.

[doodab]

The point is not to make programmers or IT staff. The point is that understanding computers & digital technology at a fundamental level drives a deeper understanding of the modern world of things around you, in the way that basic latin and greek knowledge confers a better understanding of language. It's the sort of fundamental stuff that every schoolchild ought to know.

[Doggy Styles]

And it was all made out of TTL and ECL (for those who wanted it to go a bit faster).

And they had mother-racks instead of motherboards.

[zeitghost]

I just remembered about this stuff:

Plated wire memory - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Used in the Shuttle.

Box 4-7: Shuttle Engine Controller Hardware

The computer chosen for the engine controllers is the Honeywell HDC-601.

The Air Force was using it in 1972 when the choice was made, so operational experience existed.

Additionally, the machine was software compatible with the DDP 516, a ground-based Honeywell minicomputer, so a development environment was available.

Honeywell built parts of the controller in St. Petersburg, Florida and shipped those to the main plant in Minneapolis for final assembly; within a couple of years, all the construction tasks moved to St. Petersburg.

By mid-1983, Honeywell completed 29 of the computers177.

The HDC-601 uses a 16-bit instruction word.

It can do an add in 2 microseconds, a multiply in 9.

Eighty-seven instructions are available to programmers, and all software is coded in assembly language178.

The memory is 2-mil plated wire, which has been used widely in the military and is known for its ruggedness.

It functions much like a core memory in that data are stored as a one or zero by changing the polarity in a segment of the wire.

Each machine has 16K of 17 bits, the seventeenth bit used to provide even parity179.

Plated wire has the advantage of having nondestructive readout capability.

[Lockhouse]

Times change. 40 years ago there wasn't much of an IT industry outside those making the hardware, just a few boffins. What would the IT people on here have been doing instead?

Male model.

[Mich the Tester]

Male model.

Been there, done that, doesn't pay well and doesn't last beyond about 25 years old.

[Doggy Styles]

Been there, done that, doesn't pay well and doesn't last beyond about 25 years old.

Really? Sod it. That's another plan B out of the window...

[TimberWolf]

Medicine is where the money is.

[SueEllen]

Medicine is where the money is.

It won't be after the Tory government has finished.

[Spacecadet]

It won't be after the Tory government has finished.

They're only finishing with competence what Labour started with incompetence etc etc...