The biggest leap forward in software development for me was the shift to a development station consisting of a keyboard and a CRT (it was a custom unit produced by Intel in the days before the PC was in existance). It seems to me they cost several thousand dollars. As best I recall the first ones I used were large dark blue boxes that included a slot for a 8″ floppy disk. The marvel was that one could make changes to the assembly (mnemonic) code and reassemble without having to repeat all the steps. If the assembler detected errors you could see them at once and it was a much simpler matter to make a fix or two and immediately re-assemble to see if everything was OK. On top of that the magnetic storage was so much easier and quicker than punched tape. Continue reading →