How many of you listening here can claim that their very first computer program was written in punched cards?

The very first computer program I wrote was in the programming language Algol in a B6700 computer, typed in punched cards (one card per line).

You punched the cards, then you put them in a pigeonhole, and the next day you would collect the printout with the result of the compilation and running the program.

So you'd better make sure you got everything right the first time, as otherwise you would need to wait for 24hrs to try again.

This was in 1981, in my second last year of high school (at Colégio Anchieta in Porto Alegre, Brazil).

The B6700 computer belonged to UFRGS (Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul), and somehow our school was allowed to use it. In fact, the teacher of that course was a person from UFRGS working at the CPD (Centro de Processamento de Dados).

The B6700 computer was well ahead of its time, already in the early 1970's. Search it!

You will see that it had features that only recently current CPU's are trying to catch-up with regarding security.