whartung wrote:
A PC running FORTRAN could be a great productivity booster for someone who relies upon centralized computing resources.
Not necessarily to actually run the applications, especially early one before the math co-processors became more and more widely available. But simply empowering development of the programs. Being able to edit, compile, and test your code on "PC" time before uploading it to the mainframe had to be just an incalculable benefit.
At school I started on a desktop HP 9830A, then dial-up via tty 33 then Apple II (early '78), I went to uni in 1980 and after 2 years of computer on my desk, it was like going back to the dark ages - they still embraced a more commercial/banking type of computing - (although there was a tiny comp sci dept. with a pdp11!) we had to submit our programs on coding sheets for the girls to type in, the programs were batch run and we got the printouts at the end of the day - if we were lucky. Latterly, we were allowed into the terminal room and I don't think my ears have recovered from 2 dozen tty33's connected to the Prime mini they had at the time - grossly underpowered and frustrating for us new people who already knew how to type and had prior experience to micros. Waiting 24 hours for a batch job (e.g. cobol) to complete was not uncommon.
During my uni time, I had a summer job in a local hospital (mostly re-writing a FORTRAN program into Apple/ucsd Pascal!), and in the department I was based, they had some big ICL thing to do blood reports on - and a traditional hierarchy with the senior analyst programmer and the programmers and operators - which I found mildly amusing, but not alien due to the uni experience - one task I had was to update a program written 20 years ago on an Elliot 903 which I took to readily - which none of these others would touch. It was a funny old time.
So you can see why at that time, the "personal" desktop was a boon to scientists and engineers - even if it were relatively slow - the ability to get results quicker, interactively was great. I don't think the university I went to recovered from our generation of new students then.
-Gordon
_________________
--
Gordon Henderson.
See my
Ruby 6502 and 65816 SBC projects here:
https://projects.drogon.net/ruby/