Programming Uphill Both Ways

Those of us who believe that programming has gotten too easy with all these sissy icons and windows (yes, you know who you are) might be pleased at the release of Hercules, an emulator for IBM mainframes. For my first programming class in college, I programmed PL/I on punchcards on an IBM S/360, and who could ever forget buying the special orange cards you used for your JCL statements and using them over and over until the operator at the RJE* room got mad at you when the dog-eared cards jammed the card reader.

* Remote Job Entry, ie, the room where you waited 45 minutes for the greenbar printout informing you of a syntax error on the fourth line of your program.