Physical, human-legible media, like punch cards
this post was submitted on 13 Oct 2025
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I once saw an application, I think some sort of old computer emulator tool, on a smartphone, read a punch card using the camera. Which made me think, QR codes are a difficult for humans to read way to put code onto a physical sheet of paper and them pass it to a computer, just like punch cards were, when it comes to technology, there is nothing new under the sun, and on a cycle, everything old is eventually new again.
"human legible"
Have you looked at a punch card? I like some assembly, but the punch card is just dots. They blur together until all you see are holes and more holes and structure has lost all meaning.
more legible than a ssd for humans
I like some assembly
So, do you work with minimum spec hardware, or are you just a masochist?
Por que no los DOS? (Pun intended)
But really it's been two things. I've had to adapt algorithms to some extremely ancient hardware that had another twenty years planned service, and I've had to work on robot operating systems where timing of operations is extremely important
DOS? That's ancient technology! Who still uses that relic!? Lol.
The very first computers were programmed using physical switches and buttons. Punched cards came later. Being a programmer in those days was a lot harder than it is now!
I mean its not that deep is it? It just become more and more manual the further you go back until you hit the first calculators that were programmed with punch cards. Eventually cards were replaced with other types of storage and keyboards as inputs. Which allowed for human readable inputs that could then be interpreted.
I think this is roughly it:
- Magnetic beads manually strung on a thread, each one representing a single bit
- Punch cards/tapes
- Single-line text editors, for use on a teletype (a-la
edorqed- which still somewhat alive assed) - Multi-line, or "visual" editors, for use on the terminal (a-la
vi) - Modern IDEs
Even your title isn't the true beginning. Before the terminal, there was just a printer. Teletype, was it?