Considering migrating to Python from Visual Basic 6 for engineering applications

[BartC]

On 22/02/2016 10:46, Steven D'Aprano wrote:
> On Mon, 22 Feb 2016 08:52 am, Jussi Piitulainen wrote:
>
>> BartC writes:
>
>>> IIRC, the first programming exercise I ever did (in 1976 using Algol
>>> 60) involved reading 3 numbers from the teletype and working out if
>>> those could form sides of a triangle.
>>
>> That was a lousy user interface even then - an inflexible user
>> interaction without even a possibility of handling errors interactively?
>> Command line arguments would have been better (if available, that is).
>
> Jussi, I think you have an inflated expectation of what was available in
> 1976. Command line? What's that? Programs ran in batch mode,
> and 'interactive' meant that you could easily slip out one punched card,
> replace it with a different one, and run the program again.

Our system must have been more advanced then, or designed for training. 
We used a time-sharing 'dec-system 10' and it was usually accessed via 
interactive terminals, either teletypes or the odd VDU.

It still supported punched cards but that was more because they were 
still being used in the real world.

-- 
Bartc