strangest systems I've sent email from

[ben]

On 4/25/2016 1:12 PM, Chuck Guzis wrote:
> On 04/25/2016 10:50 AM, Brian L. Stuart wrote:
>
>> I usually try to stay out of such discussions, but I think it's
>> important to draw some distinctions here.  First, it's not pointing
>> out which languages/techniques are popular that's narrow-
>> minded and short-sighted.  It's the view that popularity and
>> "commercial viability" is the primary consideration of value
>> in education that's narrow-minded and short-sighted.
>
> Exactly to the point!   In its day, JOVIAL was a great programming
> language, but who the heck knows it today?  In 1970, a student taking a
> programming languages course would be likely be exposed to COBOL,
> FORTRAN, Algol and perhaps PL/I.  How many students today are conversant
> in those?  Those were the big "general-purpose" languages and you'd be
> unlikely to find a job not knowing at least two of those.
>
> We ran into that with COBOL and Y2K, which surprised me, since I didn't
> think that COBOL had quite gone out of fashion yet in 1998.  Back then I
> wondered if there were any extant 7080 autocoder applications still
> running around (running under emulation) that needed updating.
>
> Times change and it's always best to take the broad view of learning as
> many languages as opportunity affords.
>
> Down at the bottom, it's all machine code.

I suspect IBM 360/370 until the PC BOOM.

> --Chuck

But for the most part Common Folk did not have the resources
I suspect for REAL programing languages, because those require
a REAL OS to run with, and after the 8086 the Newer chips became
too complex to use, and the 68000 was only 16 bit addressing.
Then Windows came out and NON-DIS-CLOSER become the norm.
Then hardware and plug and play... USB... IBM packed decimal.
Ben.
PS:
The Only hardware gripe I have with Oberon you just have 1 SD
slot. What if I want to back up the card?