Earlier quoted context omitted.
We still learned how to use them in the 80’s high school computer classes, mostly because we had a balance of CP/M plus card-reader/early DOS machines, eventually .. in the labs. Rich kid schools had Apples though, and some of them also had card readers for BASIC ..
"[..] card readers for BASIC" Finally, a sensible use case for BASIC's "READ" and "DATA" commands. Learning BASIC as a kid on a micro, it always struck me as an odd way to get input into a program. Sure, with INPUT, you'd have to hand enter your input every time, but baking into the program meant that you'd have to edit your program any time you wanted to change anything. But with a card reader, you could "cut the de…
Indeed, we still pay homage to the era with terms such as the stack, pushing and popping, and all kinds of things .. i remember we had fun inserting random infinite loops in other students cards on occasion until we all realized we could just have marked “finished” stacks with an X across the spine, and also to ease sorting, and so on .. i would mark certain sub-routines with different color markers on the spine too, just to see a budget for how much computing time i expected to be billed for, and so on and on .. lots of valuable hands on came from the card-based computing, its a lost art ..