hmmm... not sure, but I do remember transitioning from punch cards and batch processing to a VT-100 terminal where I could run the program myself!

Steve in Peoria (still amazed by stuff like core memory)

Ha, I tried to do that, and my pad rotated it every time. Technology.

We had punch cards in high school that we programmed to approximate pi by throwing “darts” at a 1x1 square. The darts were x, y coordinates from the random number generator.

I watched Persian Gulf war games at the Naval War College on big screens in 1978. The results were about half human and half computer generated.

In college the first time, I watched guys develop hull shapes for surface ships, subs, and torpedoes on screens with line art graphics, and then a machine would carve a block of wood for use in a 100’ and 300’ tank.

Later we used teletype printing computers to run war games on the East Coast. (I “ran” air strikes out of New Hanover Regional Jetport in Wilmington NC), and the targeting info would be specific to a spotter having “eyes on target,” which included the names and unit designations of Soviet units, or just grid coordinates, which meant less intel. The printer would spit back BDA’s and likely casually assessments.

Tom Landry was widely criticized for running game scenarios through a computer as coach of the Cowboys. Imagine that.