WordStar!!! Now, that was word processing. Everything you needed, nothing you didn't.
In the late 80s, I learned WordStar and dBase because our supervisor had bought a 286 for the office, and I found it it could print out all our form letters with names and addresses - I wouldn't have to write out hundreds of letters each month - and, bonus, I wouldn't have to count 3x5 cards to complete the monthly report! The computer would do it for me! I didn't realize that dBase was a complex program. I just hammered thru it so I could let the computer do the stupid work for me. I hated counting 3x5 cards.
But I was already familiar with computers - my first programming class, in high school, was the first one ever offered by the school system. NASA had donated a room-sized computer, and this allowed the vocational secretarial students to learn keypunch, a new and valued skill. We wrote the programs, in BASIC, and they keypunched them in. The next week, we'd get 11x17 green and white printouts of our work.
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branchandroot
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Date: Thursday, 2 April 2015 07:33 pm (UTC)Now, that was word processing. Everything you needed, nothing you didn't.
In the late 80s, I learned WordStar and dBase because our supervisor had bought a 286 for the office, and I found it it could print out all our form letters with names and addresses - I wouldn't have to write out hundreds of letters each month - and, bonus, I wouldn't have to count 3x5 cards to complete the monthly report! The computer would do it for me!
I didn't realize that dBase was a complex program. I just hammered thru it so I could let the computer do the stupid work for me. I hated counting 3x5 cards.
But I was already familiar with computers - my first programming class, in high school, was the first one ever offered by the school system. NASA had donated a room-sized computer, and this allowed the vocational secretarial students to learn keypunch, a new and valued skill. We wrote the programs, in BASIC, and they keypunched them in. The next week, we'd get 11x17 green and white printouts of our work.