Lessons learned from mainframe usage

An excellent overview of what learning to program on a mainframe was like. GDGs for source control, oh my. This comment on what you needed to do to get terminal time is so excellent:

My junior year I didn't yet have keys to the building (I got them senior year so I could have office hours for the business-school freshmen I was teaching FORTRAN - that never made sense to me either...), so we worked out the following: unlock a window in the terminal room. Climb onto the first-floor roof of the student services building. Cross that to the sciences building. Climb the ladder to the astronomy observing platform on the top of the building. Go in that door, down the hall, out the window onto the roof *again*, then in through the terminal room window.