• CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org
      401·
      12 days ago

      TBF they also had things like tapes pretty early on, and delay lines nearly since the start. The best comparison for punch cards would be text on a screen, because they were designed for the purpose of human interaction.

  • CountVon@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    48·
    12 days ago

    One of my grandfathers worked for a telephone company before he passed. That man was an absolute pack rat, he wouldn’t throw anything away. So naturally he had boxes and boxes of punch cards in this basement. I guess they were being thrown out when his employer upgraded to machines that didn’t need punch cards, so he snagged those to use as note paper. I will say, they were great for taking notes. Nice sturdy card stock, and the perfect dimensions for making a shopping list or the like.

    • xmunk@sh.itjust.works
      8·
      12 days ago

      My dad converted old assembly programs into Cobol for spending money in uni - his textbooks were full of cast offs.

    • mercano@lemmy.world
      3·
      11 days ago

      We used unused punchcards to make flashcards in elementary school in the late 80’s / early 90’s. I guess the county bought a bunch and had to find another use.

      And now I realize the primary definition of flashcard has changed since then, from study aid to digital storage.

    • grysbok@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
      3·
      12 days ago

      Makes sense. I’m a librarian and we still use cards from the old card catalog for notes.

    • Ing0R@feddit.de
      16·
      12 days ago

      It absolutely is. A punch card represents a line of text, mostly in a programming language.

        • Ing0R@feddit.de
          3·
          10 days ago

          In the 90s my dad showed me his stack of IBM compatible 12 bit per column, 80 column card from his time working at the university physics department’s computer in the 70s. He had no access anymore to card readers and just kept the cards for sentimental value.

          Most cards contain FORTRAN programs for the TR440 computer made by Telefunken.

          Sorry, I have no further proof. :)

  • flora_explora@beehaw.org
    17·
    11 days ago

    Let’s say that we have a more recent micro SD card of 1 TB. So to contain the same information in a punch card (with a byte density of 80 byte/156 cm² = 0.512 byte/cm²), we would need a card of 512,820,512,820 cm². If I’m not mistaken that would be a punch card the size of 51 km²!! This is wild :O

    • xmunk@sh.itjust.works
      5·
      12 days ago

      It is insanely interesting to me whenever I come across details in old file formats that were included specifically to work around hardware limitations. The wide knowledge required to be aware of all these wild factors is amazing.

      As you can tell, I’m fun at parties.

        • xmunk@sh.itjust.works
          5·
          11 days ago

          One of my proudest university moments was getting a 50% on an exam. I built this absolutely fucking glorious solitare implementation in Java as a first year student that dove deep into how image buffers work and stayed up all night doing it. I got 100% on the project and 0% on the presentation that I slept through (my prof did offer me some extra credit which I took advantage of).

          Never have I ever felt more validated in preferring to be a code monkey with zero interactions with clients than in that moment - I produced unimpeachably perfect results and completely fucked the communication side (thankfully, I’ve worked through a lot of my social anxiety but I’m still strongly in the introvert camp).

  • schnurrito@discuss.tchncs.de
    14·
    12 days ago

    Future archeologists be like we keep finding microSD cards from the early 21st century and have to wade through all that data to figure out anything about that period, from earlier periods we only have paper records.

    • xmunk@sh.itjust.works
      11·
      12 days ago

      “To contrast, the human brain apparently can’t remember a simple piece of information like not getting attached to their companion cube. I think we know who would be better at a party, the punchcard.”

  • rbits
    6·
    11 days ago

    A tower defense game with a microprocessor theme

    Does anyone remember that club penguin tower defence game where you defend against computer viruses?