alt Hacker NewsPunchcards are also mechanically configured, not symbolically programmed. If you see huge semantical difference between a card with holes and a cylinder with pins or a cam with groves, please explain that difference. Or is the "arbitrary length" the main difference?
I'd imagine something that changes operation based purely on state (position of a dial, presence of a peg in a slot etc) conceptually being "symbolic". Punchcards are not it.
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andsoitis • yesterday at 4:13 PM
> Punchcards are also mechanically configured, not symbolically programmed.
I don’t know that I said the punchcards are programmable.
It is the machine that is programmable via the punchcards.
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I used to have colleagues who literally learned to program on punched card machines. As in they wrote a program on paper in symbolic assembler, manually converted it to machine code, punched the machine code onto a card,and then carried the cards to the nearby university so that they could run their school homework program.
They would be amused by the idea that this wasn't computing.
Punched cards store bits. Bits can store symbols.