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crentapa (4)
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Basically, you need to think of "old computers" as the way "new computers" are... they were the same thing.
The ONLY difference is that people TODAY are too stupid to know how to use computers and need to have GUIs and all kinds of things to baby them into using them.
Do you want to access a remote computer, request information, and parse that information into a photo that you can then print? You could do that back then, but no one was doing it because there wasn't really a demand for it and people were using FILM instead of digital cameras.
See, the difference between me and Satan2016, CRC32, and TheMan18 is that I actually know how computers work... most people don't... and even fewer people who use the internet as their source of wisdom and information.
What I've been trying to explain is that you're asking the wrong question... the question isn't what COULD you do with a computer, but what WOULD you do with a computer.
There were computer games, Monochromatic monitors (not ALL of them were Green Satan2016) were common because controlling multiple color outputs was not seen as required until demand for it came. Could a 60's computer have done it? Yep. There just wasn't demand.
But a computer would be used to make calculations that you wouldn't want to keep doing by hand. Say, stock market calculations... or to play games on (Again, Adventure!) if you were VERY VERY RICH.
In short, Hidden Figures (not the nonsense politics that came out of that movie) is a very good way to think about your question. Computers replaced people who would just push buttons on a calculator over and over again. The nonsense politics of "they were more than button pushers" is just that and ignores what computers were and what they did.
Electronic Computer vs Human Computer.
Once you grasp that, and add in that an Electronic Computer could then perform actions (electrical signal to open a door based on an electrical signal that it is raining) you can grasp what people would do
CRC32's notion of networking being less than it was is highly incorrect... as are it's notions of tape vs harddrives vs SSD.
Viruses aren't magical things, like CRC32 seems to think... which means it has no idea how viruses operate. You can get a virus on magnetic tape just like any storage medium. A virus would be simple things, mostly intended to cause destruction like forcing the computer to go down with a never ending while loop.
Networking was primitive, but was still being built up. A virus is ONLY sending information that could be used in a malicious manner. If one computer asked another computer "is it raining outside" and the other computer said "yes" then the computer opened the door, closed the window... and ordered groceries... guess what! I just broke into your house!
Spreadsheets were INVENTED as a EASY WAY TO PROGRAM!
Before variable names came into play, you would directly map out memory... a spread sheet is a MEMORY MAP ...
Satan2016 really doesn't know what it's talking about. After all, it uses wikipedia, the number one source of misinformation known to mankind.
I gather that Satan2016 ALSO doesn't know anything more than you do. Guess what, a Floppy is just a SMALL VERSION of magnetic tape storage, and we STILL use magnetic tape. YES WE DO! Compared with just how cheap it is per Terabyte vs other forms of storage... you have no idea at all do you?
CRC32 is a fair bit better, but I want to correct something he claimed.
The Apollo Guidance system was not "Assembly" as we know it. That is PURE misinformation. Assembly as we know it is a highly complex system that is mostly intended to be used by compilers where as the noun verb PROGRAMMING LANGUAGE of the Apollo Guidance system was how people interacted with the system, NOT REALLY ASSEMBLY!
Consider, a calculator allows you to interact by pressing buttons and outputting an answer. You wouldn't claim this was assembly, but that is what CRC32 is claiming. The guidance system did NOT have a conventional OS the way we think of it... and astronauts were required to be able to write small programs... it's a PROGRAMMING LANGUAGE!
There was something else that developed rather rapidly called "workstations" OOPS! I KNOW SOMETHING!
Basically there would be a huge computer that actually processed things and all computers in the college would timeshare with the huge computer to get things processed. You'd wait in queue and then the machine would send the information back to your workstation and you'd get the results. Often this was printed back (monitors were expensive).
One of my college professors talked about how he played Adventure (really old game) this way... and how great the printing was because it kept track of what moves he made so he could make them again. Look up the game, it was one of the original computer games made out of a mapping program!
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