Turning Points in Computer Education - History of Computing: Learning from the Past - page 162

machines with a typewriter-like keyboard. Each line of code required an individual
punch card. Groups or “decks” of cards combined to form programs. Students submit-
ted the program decks, generally followed by data cards to be read by the program, to
a person working behind a counter in the computer room. Decks contained special Job
Control Language cards to act as job separators so that an operator could stack several
job decks in the card reader at the same time and be able to quickly separate the decks
manually when he removed them from the stacker. After running a job the computer
operator would return the card deck and any hardcopy output to the student or file it
for later student pickup. He did not enjoy the course and decided that his interest in
computers had been misplaced.
He then transferred to at the University of Texas at Austin in 1979. He started pur-
suing a degree in Chemical Engineering, but quickly found that he had little interest in
that major. A friend talked him into taking a Pascal programming course, and this
time the instructor was more experienced and a better communicator and the Ameri-
can thoroughly enjoyed the course and found that he had an affinity for programming
and software development. As with his prior experience, punch cards were used for
program submission. Unlike the much smaller junior college, however, wait times
could be discouraging The university had multiple computer labs in various buildings
across campus. Lines at keypunch machines and for deck submission were often so
long that the American student would go to the labs at 3 AM to reduce his wait time.
The wait time did, however, teach the American the advantages of dedicating a sig-
nificant effort to the problem-solving phase so that less time could be spent on the
implementation phase, an approach that today's students fail to embrace.
The computer science curriculum was well established at that time, and the American
took courses in Assembly Language Techniques, Programming Languages, Program-
ming Applications and Practices, Data Structures, Database Management Systems,
Numerical Techniques, Artificial Intelligence, and Computer Systems Architecture.
These stories demonstrate the second turning point, in which computers became
available to the undergraduate. In both cases they are seen as a vehicle for executing
computer programs and each person saw a large jump in ease of use that sparked an
interest in becoming adept with the new technology.
5 First Jobs
The Australian's university education was financed through a government scholarship
that required him to teach in the school system for three years. By 1970, when he first
commenced full time work, the baby boom was well under way in Australia as it was
everywhere else in the post war world. The number of new high school teachers was
far below the numbers required by the enormous population of high school students.
Because the Australian was a new teacher he received a posting at a country high
school. The Institute of Technology was short of mathematics teachers in that country
town and the young teacher found himself responsible for all the senior mathematics
and physics classes, as well as a part-time job teaching engineering mathematics at
the Institute. Since this was before an awareness of the importance of balancing work
and home life, the new teacher also decided to undertake a postgraduate course in
computing at the Institute. By coincidence and enormous luck the local Institute