🚀 go-pugleaf

<hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com> wrote:
> On Sunday, June 3, 2018 at 9:30:04 AM UTC-4, Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote:
> 
>>> From the late 1960s onward, many schools got Teletypes and timesharing
>>> and offered BASIC classes.
>> 
>> In the early to mid 70s our school had a Teletype, and there was a
>> lunchtime BASIC class offered to a few of us. The Teletype did not connect
>> to a timesharing service, it connected to another Teletype to send and
>> receive paper tapes of programs to be run, and the results of yesterday's
>> runs. Getting a syntax error back was a real time waster.
>> 
>> The Teletype was only available to us during break and lunch. After
>> school a sixth former would make the call and deal with the tapes whilst
>> trying to chat up the operator at the other end.
> 
> OMG, that would be cumbersome--a 24 hour turnaround.  I would think
> that would be very discouraging to students--having to wait an
> entire day only to learn a comma was left out, and then needing to
> wait another day for another submission.
> 
> However, there were numerous times in industry in the 1980s and 1990s
> where the company computer would be so busy with production work that
> programmer work had to wait until overnight, so there was the similar
> long wait for results.

BTDT. I used to work on several programs at once, so one could be waiting
for a debug run, another in keypunching, and a third (or more) being coded.

> 
> In those days, we were often encouraged to work evening, late
> night, or weekend hours to use the computer.  People with families
> didn't care for it since they missed family time.  However, single
> people liked it* because it gave them a lot of flexibility.
> 
> I liked it because I could take care of day chores, such as car
> repair or doctor appts without taking time off from work--I'd just
> work late or on a weekend to make up the time.  I liked the flexibility.
> 
> However, I've noticed today that modern management is much less flexible
> and expect staff to work on their prescribed schedule without any
> deviation**.  That kind of sucks.

Nowadays (from what I've seen, I'm happily out of the rat race) they expect
you to work your regular hours plus whatever time you need at home to fix
some "urgent" problem that could easily wait on nights and weekends. (
without extra pay or comp time, of course).

-- 
Pete