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My dad learned with punch cards. He said he'd work on his little program for an hour after which it would be posted off to a bank. A week later you get the output back and it'd say "error".
You know how you write a bit of code, run it, and then have a series of errors to fix before it "works" but still gives the wrong answer? That, but with a week wait each time
frankenbike-
I started my IT career at what was then called the Census Office now ONS. The ‘coder’ would mark their program on coding sheets and a typist would enter into a card punch terminal and the cards would be punched with the code. We had decks of 1500 cards to load into the reader. They were numbered and they were loaded into a hopper. You were VERY careful not to drop them.
Also did quite a lot of work with paper tape. That was hilarious and made great Christmas decs around the office.
Alan_tbt
Not that it's a competition, when I first started learning to code formally I used punch cards. My teacher was of the old school where they preferred to teach the maths before allowing you to move on to the 2GL and 3GL languages. They had a pretty cool collection of what were nearly museum pieces, including an amazing "laptop" that weighed 20kg and had wheels!