🚀 go-pugleaf

Hi!

The recent serie of old stories remains me one of them, my friend told me
lately. They were using an ALGOL-GIER (?) machine, no punchers were available,
all programs were done on paper tapes. He (was a college student at that time)
used to fix errors on tapes sealing holes with a paper tape, then he was using
a specific device to punch a hole at a time. It was a 5- or 7-track tape 
(I don't remember), he of course remembered all the possible codes. The 
machine, they used, had a full of 4K of memory and a printer. He remembers
he migth get some extra money for his studies, doing statistical calculations
for different people. Time-to-time the data were a nonsense, and when he said
that to his customers, they stopped to pay him for the calculations. So he
add a few lines of code to his program, like "THESE DATA ARE MEANINGLESS.
SORRY - CAN'T PROCESS WITH CALCULATIONS" - and everyone seemed to believe
in computer's justice...

Myself I remember a fashion to write programs which punched cards and produced
funy-looking figures made from holes.

Antek (ANTEK @ (BIOCH,BIGRAF).TAMU.EDU or BITNET: ANTEK @ TAMBIGRF.