When I was a Lad
               Stone knives and bearskins: the real story
Lyrics Copyright 2001 Stephen Savitzky.  CC by-nc-sa/4.0.
To the tune of When I was a Boy by Frank Hayes

     A
When I was a lad our computer
     D                   A
Had vacuum tubes and a drum
        D                          A
And we wound paper tape for our input
    E7                       A
Between our forefinger and thumb.
            D                           A
Back when smalltalk was sports and the weather
       D                          A
And an object was what you could see
                             A
And we watched Captain Video in black and white
   E7                   A
Before there was color TV.


    And we walked seven miles to the schoolhouse -- 
    It really was uphill both ways -- 
    Through weather in summer and winter,
    Back in the good old days.
    Back before fortran 77

    Nobody'll ever need more than 640K
    And we entered our programs on punched cards
    When I was a lad.

When I was a lad all our networks
Ran on modems and UUCP
When the ARPANET had only sixteen nodes
And it didn't support FTP.
Now you kids who think your T1 line
Is fast, better watch what you say
And consider the speed of a truck full of tapes
As it barrels along the highway.


    And we walked seven miles to the schoolhouse -- 
    It really was uphill both ways -- 
    Through weather in summer and winter,
    Back in the good old days.
    Back when fortran was not even fortran IV

    For serious computing you need VMS
    And we entered our programs on paper tape
    When I was a lad.



When I was a lad our IS shop
Used mechanical sorters and such
And we numbered our decks with a drum-card
To protect them, though not very much
Back when space travel was science fiction
And a mainframe weighed fifty-five tons
And we programmed in ones and in zeros *with a hand-punch!*
And filled up the chad-box with ones.


    And we walked seven miles to the schoolhouse -- 
    It really was uphill both ways -- 
    Through weather in summer and winter,
    Back in the good old days.
    Back when fortran was not even fortran II

    we'll only ever sell six of 'em
    And we entered our programs on plugboards
    When I was a lad.


OK, the chronology is screwed up, it was only three miles, and I never
actually programmed a plugboard (but our IS shop did).  Everything else is
true.  Note that ``vacuum'' in the second line has three syllables.


``Only six computers will ever be sold in the commercial market'' has been
attributed to Howard Aiken of IBM.
(reference) 



Also note that I'm about 10 years older than Frank Hayes, so I don't
have to exaggerate.



Online:
    http://Steve.Savitzky.net/Songs/lad/lyrics.chords.txt

Automatically generated with flktran from ../Lyrics/lad.flk.