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Amusingly, my physics and math classes all used FORTRAN, but my teachers were OK with me translating the programs to BASIC so I could run them on my crude MS-DOS computer. I had a copy of the IBM FORTRAN compiler, but it was this cumbersome beast that required two diskettes -- one contained the compiler and the other contained the linker, or something like that. And the complete compile/link workflow took several minutes. BASIC, and then Turbo Pascal, were game changing because you could run a program instantly.

BASIC even had crude array math via the MAT statement though I don't recall the details.

I got to my senior year, second semester, and had a meeting with my advisor to make sure I had met all of my graduation requirements. He looked at my record and said: "Hey, you were supposed to take a programming class. But you know how to program, don't you?" I said yes. He checked the box to waive that requirement for me. Then I started breathing again.




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