I was one of probably 10 or 15 people in the world who preferred Macro Level CICS instead of Command Level CICS. Loved seeing what went on behind the scenes. Speaking of JCL...how much fun was it to slip in the occasional DD DUMMY into a JCL stream?

With COBOL, PL1, JCL and CICS for online stuff you could get a job anywhere. Now you HAVE to not only know some obscure language, but the exact version they have. Many years ago, I was turned down for an interview because I didn't have 5 years of .net experience..... .net was only released 2 years before. When I informed them of that they said.. "The job requires 5 years of experience"

Paper tape for me in '74, until that was followed by cards on another site in '76.
Like yours, that computer also had 64k of memory (and required a full floor of the building.)
We had to re-code overlays (running out of memory) to add capabilities that the original
designer hadn't considered when he designed it with an old college drinking buddy providing
the design requirements. ;^)

"Coding Regimen"?? That is a slap of reality! I agree - feelin' old.....

Paper tape for the high school programs, and IBM 028 card punches initially in college. The 028 didn't interpret; all it did was punch the square zone & digit holes. Had to interpret on another IBM machine. Then we went to the 128 card punch, and you entered your data, hit release, and the card slid through and punched & interpreted at the same time. Felt like we were living high on the hog!

LOL, Pong was fun, but got old fast. I cut my coding teeth using FORTRAN in '72 on a CDC 1704 mini computer that used core memory (yeah, iron donuts with wires through them). When it was scrapped in the late '70s I rescued an 8k byte core module, which is a bit larger than a cubic foot and weighs about 10 pounds. It's in my "man cave" as a remembrance. The system employed 8 of these modules to give it a total memory capacity of 64k bytes. We did a LOT with that machine. Oh, the mass storage was a pair of multi-platter CDC drives with a total of 2.5 mega bytes each. One was online live and the other was the backup. Programs were entered on punched cards or paper tape - WTF are those?!!! LMAO.

Edit add: Oh wait! I took a 3 month DP course in high school in '69 and was introduced to JPL and COBOL! Had to take a bus to a downtown location to time share on an IBM 360. (I think it was a 360) Forgot about that!

I'll go back even more...my first real program (to prove a mathematical theorem) as a junior in high school (spring '74, I think) was written in BASIC.

And you're right; without us oldies, the newbies wouldn't exist. As exhibit A, I give you: Pong.

Ha ha, I know how you feel, rainman0720. I'm an old FORTRAN coder myself. Just keep in mind without guys like us, they would never be.