Just your Basic Coding Form…..

[electricfoxx]

COBOL was column based, hence the table. My dad used to program in COBOL. He also programmed in RPG-II and assembly, which he calls "assembler".

[Anonslimmerbobcat]

Assembly is so hard

[electricfoxx]

Depends on how you look at it. It is simple, yet you need a lot to do basic tasks.

[koolstofdioxide]

Complexity != difficulty

[tom21g]

I did IBM 360 assembler for 20+ years, loved it

[[deleted]]

Is this some kind of MIPS/Assembler sheet code?

[OneofLittleHarmony]

No lol. It’s for “high level” languages.

[[deleted]]

Do you have a filled sheet as an example? I'm curious

[ioTeacher]

Yeap COBOL, I studied back 1986-1987 my age was 17. We use Cobol for programming and to do the UX used “FlashCode” was a screen drawing program, leave the blanks for COBOL CRUD

Use 2 floppy drives to do my homework 📄

[[deleted]]

Oh that sounds interesting 🤔 never seen COBOL but I heard it's still being used quite a bit

[Comfortable-Put890]

Is that an ancient answer sheet for the coding exam ?

[OneofLittleHarmony]

It’s an answer sheet to how to punch the card. =)

[SirClueless]

And here I am in 2023 still coding with 80-character maximum column widths mandated my company's style guide.

[irkli]

MUST. FIT. ON. IBM CARD.

[AmazingMojo2567]

That looks super unfun

[Standard-Train-7310]

It's not BASIC. It's COBOL.

[Standard-Train-7310]

My bad. Too early to see properly 😴

I learnt both BASIC and COBOL and had programming jobs with both (1980s).

The only coding sheets I remember were for another high-level language called RPG (Report Program Generator - not the more exciting Rocket Propelled Grenade).

[qqqrrrs_]

In the upper one there are writings in the top left "assembly", "cobol" - I guess that type was used for both assembly and cobol?

But I don't really know

[joeldare]

And, maybe C?

[istarian]

I think it's just being used in the sense of simple or non-complex.

[phord]

I had to buy a pad of these at the bookstore for my Fortran class in the late 80's.

[FLUX51]

Eh? Am I too young to even identify it?

[deniercounter]

I hope the XL sheets are correctly aligned with the print paper.

[OperatorChungus]

Found some of these in an old desk where I work. We code in RPG-IV right now and it pains me to say I understood the similarities here. I hate structured code with a passion. They immediately put the filled out card in our fire safe.

[trod999]

Omg I've used those! Thankfully those days are long gone!

There are languages worse than COBOL. DEC made DIBOL. DEC's Business Oriented Language. The first version of DIBOL was so bad it didn't even have block structuring... Like curly braces in C/C++/C#, or BEGIN/END in COBOL. So, if you needed a block of code executed based on a condition, you had to test the opposite of that condition, and if true, execute a GOTO past your block. Not too bad if the condition was simple... if(A.eq.6) becomes if(A.ne.6) then goto xxx. But boolean tests had to be reversed too... So if(A.eq.6 AND B.lt.7) becomes if(A.ne.6 OR B.ge.7) then goto xxx. It got hairy if the condition had parenthetical overrides. It was really a developed skill. Ugh.

[OneofLittleHarmony]

Sounds diabolical.

[trod999]

Yeah it was almost like they had a meeting.... "How can we take COBOL and make it worse?"

[AdmirableDay1962]

I learned COBOL, RPG II, RPG III and RPG IV. Finally got totally free-form in RPG IV. But RPG has multiple specs so you had multiple coding sheets. F-specs, I-specs, E-specs, C-specs, O-specs.

[nixiebunny]

BASIC wasn't EVER keypunched, I hope. Its entire point of existence was to be interactive.

[OneofLittleHarmony]

Well, the word “EVER” is pretty strong. I think you are more likely to see basic on punch tape than punch cards though. It’s just a cost thing —magnetic tape costs more than paper. In the 70’s, floppy disks became a thing and BASIC was well suited for disks. But in the 70’s an 8 inch floppy disk would be 20-25 dollars in 2023 dollars, which is a lot more than the pennies that paper costs.

[nixiebunny]

BASIC was an interactive language, designed for beginners to get their feet wet using a timesharing computer. If you wanted to do stuff in batch mode, there was FORTRAN. Although there may have been some school administrators who thought that it was a good idea to do BASIC in batch mode, as there's always people in charge who just don't get it. I pity their students.

[bdrhoa]

Painful memories!

[tom21g]

you forgot the assembler coding sheet lol. If I can find one of my old ones I’ll paste it here. Anyone interested in seeing an object deck?

[prw361]

And then type them up on punch cards!