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Philip Eley

lower case rules ok Your 30th anniversary issue (congratulations!) coincided with my 70th birthday and inspired me to look back over the 50+ years since I wrote my first program (Fortran IV, 80 column punched cards, one compilation run per 24 hours, overnight) and pick out the most memorable innovations. Moving from punched cards to keyboard and screen, the first good full-screen text editor (Norton Editor under MS-DOS – I still use it occasionally), the transition from text-based to graphics-based operating systems, the first word processors, and the move from mono to colour screens, have all been really important. But, on reflection, the one change that made the biggest immediate impression was something apparently trivial. It happened when, some time around 1980, we powered on a new machine (possibly a DEC microVAX) and…

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PC Pro (Digital) - 1 Issue, October 2024

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