All Comments on 'Tricia and Fortran IV'

Wonderful story! Guys would be a lot better off with a Tricia in their lives. I remember using the punch cards when I took a research course.

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When we submitted our stacks of punch cards, if there was an error there was a ding, I ran some really big jobs, and the cacophony of dings filled the room as everyone looked around to see who had caused it. About 1972-4

I remember Fortran. Then punching tape for early NC machining. Later it was single line editing direct into a machine tool, what a pain that was. Tricia would be the kind of girl I would have enjoyed meeting.

Always enjoy your stories no matter what genre you choose, and all your women have bush :)

I remember FORTRAN, and late nights until the damn thing finally ran. Greasy pizza. Bad beer. And girls who were (are) your best friends first.

My first program was in Fortran II, and I got really good at an 029 card punch. Anyone who wrote programs in those days that processed data cards will remember what a 99 card is.

FORTRAN! Wished I knew a Tricia in those days! In the old days were are given a simple problem, had to handwrite our program on the sheets, turned those in for a grade, got an 'A'! Punch the cards, yada, yada. Run the cards on the mainframe, 32 pages(Page limit) of junk(On that old wide computer paper) that said I was stupid! Grad student helping me de-bug said maybe I should try hexadecimal. What? Fortran fucked my GPA!

Yup, I was one of those geeks, too. I was a few years behind, writing code in BASIC. I did use batch cards, though, and I remember those error messages! I never may any girls there, though.

Yes, this is another great story, so as always, thank you for writing and thank you for sharing your work.

A wonderful gentle story of sexual exploration and, yes, I remember those punch cards doing a Fortran minor at university. Also remember a detox system a company ran using punch cards for every invoice, rows and rows of cards in trays. 5⛤

Nice stroll down memory lane with Fortran IV and punch cards

My granddad took computer programming courses around 1970. Same thing as the author described. Punch cards. Card readers. Turning the card deck into the computer room desk. Getting your results 24 hours later. Repeat until it ran correctly. The 1970’s - 1990’s were exciting times in the field of computer programming and operations. Capacity doubled every 18 months (faster computers, faster / higher density storage, etc), DASD, DOS. OS, OS360, MVS, CICS, etc.

I learned programming in Fortran IV and Algol 60 at an English university in the early 70s. Although I never had a Tricia to lend a hand!

ronde, this is another well-written and fun story that brought back some memories. Fortunately, my university trashed the card system just before I arrived and I didn't have to go through this with my Fortran class, though there were often lines to get a terminal in the computer rooms. However, this tale sounds so much like what a friend went through in Cookeville, both with the programming and the dorm situation. Tricia's added code in his program was a sweet twist that helped elevate this above a standard tale of discovery. Thanks for writing and sharing.

At least they didn't drop the deck. That was a problem.

I used FORTRAN (FORmula TRANslation) and WATFIV (WATerloo Fortran IV) in college to enable me to complete P-Chem lab reports in less than 5% of the time of doing the calculations manually. In grad school, I used FORTRAN on an IBM 370, and it was still Hollerith Cards (invented by Herman Hollerith in 1889 to process the 1880 Census - yes, they were that far behind. They didn't have computers, just spindles to sort the cards). By grad school, I was as good or better at FORTRAN than the paid computer consultants in the computer center. That meant that there was a steady stream of women who needed assistance. I didn't trade assistance for sexual favors, but I did find women to date. Once I got better at IBM 370 JCL, my "value" increased even more. I will have to write some stories based upon that. In about 1977, the first computer terminals appeared, but they did not replace Hollerith Cards for several more years.

I took the same Fortran class with the punch cards and 'submit the deck to be run' process. I didn't have anyone to help me check my syntax, though.

Great story, as always. Brought back a lot of memories.

Nice, fun story. For me, it brings back my own college days (major state university (Big 10), early 1970s). Some things were different. There, there were generally no long waits for a keypunch. You could feed your own deck into a card reader, and as soon as the IBM 360 (or 370?) got around to processing it, you could pick up your printout at the window.

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There were more boys than girls taking computer courses, but it was nowhere near as lopsided as you describe. There were weekend and evening "visitation" hours in the dorms, though a sign in/out was required to visit the opposite sex's dorm (or wing or floor, as the case might be), beyond certain public areas.

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Nerdy girls were mostly by no means as careless of their appearance as you describe. Hey, I met my wife in math class! We're past the 50-year mark, for what it's worth. (Well, she promised to need me and feed me when I was 64, and she did it. (The "feed" part, anyway, and she doesn't seem that unhappy with me yet.) That's a few years ago now.)

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(And my first college computer class used a version of Fortran IV, as well as some PL/1.)

Nice premise.

Maybe a bit too detailed re Fortran, and not detailed enough about sex.

Needed more details of 'exploring' each other. Teasing each other. Discussing how what was happening made each feel.

Needed more boob playing. Kissing. Licking. Sucking.

Needed 'exploration' of his balls. And some wonderment on her part about his reactions to her manipulations.

Three stars.

Flashback time! I bootlegged a Fortran IV class that a friend of mine was taking. Didn't get much out of it. Several years later, I wound up learning Algol 66 on a big CDC 6600. Same story with the punch cards. I was husbanding a FFT program which took 3 full boxes of cards. I had a really beautiful design on the edges of the cards so if I or someone dropped the card box, I could get them back in order.