Re: How old are Emacs users?

[Harald Hanche-Olsen]

+ stromme@math.uib.no (Stein Arild Strømme):

| I don't think even Harald used any version of emacs on those punch
| cards, although I seem to recall that he did some binary code
| programming, bypassing the assembler..

Not sure that I entered any actual machine code that way, but I think
I did enter some binary data in this fashion, yes.  I can no longer
remember why.  But I think I screwed it up by having a card in my deck
that was punched 7+8 in the first or second column, which was used in
the card reader to signify end-of-job.  Oops.

| Special tricks to enter non-ascii codes on those punching machines.
| Were there Meta and Control keys there, or how did we do it?  Did it
| involve backspacing?

Well, there was no ascii.  Each column had room for 12 holes being
from top to bottom +, -, and the digits 9-0 (in the /unlikely/ event
that I remember this correctly).  To punch several holes in one
column, you could just put a thumb on the card so it wouldn't advance,
and punch away.

-- 
* Harald Hanche-Olsen     <URL:http://www.math.ntnu.no/~hanche/>
- It is undesirable to believe a proposition
  when there is no ground whatsoever for supposing it is true.
  -- Bertrand Russell