I started programming in 1974 in Fortran-IV on an IBM-1130. This machine
had 8K 16-bit words of ferrite core memory, and one 2315 1MB disk drive.
Run off cards and a 120 column printer, I learned to program under the
watchful eye of a former Indiana State prison guard. Switching to assembly
before the end of my first year I wrote a security system for the schools
administration project. (gee, those 100-A's don't look good next to your
history marks :-)
At college I was quickly employed as a consultant at the computer center
surviving a purge of the student personell. The machines I worked with
were a Decsystem-10 (ka10 196K and RP04 drives), and an IBM 360/40.
The 360/40 was upgraded to the first field test 4341 IBM made.
The DEC10 had 32 TTY lines, some as fast as 1200 baud! I learned
large system management and Operating System debugging here. Fortran, Assembly
Snobol, Lisp, Algol, APL, PPL, the language list runs on. Field testing
of operating systems was just a part time thing.
In graduate school we had VAXen, Sun-3s, and a DECSystem-20, the first
real time sharing machine in the History of Computing (if you don't have
36 bits, you're not playing with a full DEC).
Out in industry I had larger VAXen under VMS, Bean-counting under TOPS-20,
and some military hardware of questionable value. At this point I was
Chairman of the DECUS Large Systems SIG, and later a member of the
DECUS VAX Systems Sig (now the VMS SIG). I did a LOT of field testing
for VMS engineering. I'd grown to use Ada, DBMS-you-name-it, and more
assembly.
Back into the university environment, I switched to "K and R"-C then ANSI-C.
Later into ARM-C++ then into ANSI-C++. Now I field test whole systems,
disks, compilers, network software, Operating Systems (DEC, IBM, ...).
If you want it broken, just give it to me.