I learned to program with IBM Programmed Instruction courses.

I began programming 40 years ago. I was given the job to write software with absolutely no prior experience. (Yeah, I know. I was handed a career on a silver platter. It was a golden era for me.) I didn’t even know what programming was but I began working on a FORTRAN II program within a few days after I started a training course. My first application was a maintenance job. I don’t remember exactly what it was about but it was short. It couldn’t have been more than a 100 lines long.

How did I start so quickly? I was given a set of maybe 7 booklets from IBM that taught FORTRAN programming. They used the technique of “programmed instruction”. It assumed no prior knowledge of FORTRAN or programming. The total number of pages in the course was probably less than 300 pages.

The mechanics of programmed instruction is very simple. A numbered paragraph states a fact. A multiple choice question follows. An answer book tells you what to do depending on your selected answer. Actually it would tell you to continue if you answered correctly; otherwise it would tell you to start over at a lower numbered paragraph to reinforce your memory or understanding. I found it to be very easy, but I’m sure that’s because people developing the content were very skilled.

However, it didn’t prepare me for everything. After informing my boss that I was done with the course, she gave me my first job. It was to do something to a small program she had written. I carefully made the changes. I went through the code over and over. I fully expected my changes to be perfect. Now up to that point, I never saw the computer. Nowadays I never write more than a few lines before I compile and run. Well, I was devastated when I ran the program through the IBM 1620 computer the first time. The compiler produced hundreds of errors. I learned an important new term that day. The programmed instruction course hadn’t mentioned, “Syntax error”.

Over the next few days I got my first taste of the pain in computer programming. At the same time, it was thrilling. I became so excited about programming; I went through the COBOL and Assembly Language programmed courses in the next 6 months. It wasn’t an academic exercise. I used all 3 languages in my new job.