Not long after I’d published my previous post on the Computer Education in Schools Instruction Language I found a wad of paper that turned out to be my notes from the first year of my O-Level Computer Science course. I thought it might be interesting to see what was there and how computing was taught in the UK in the 80s.
Starting with CESIL
The earliest page is dated 12th September 1979 when I would have just turned 14. At this point our introduction to programming was via the CESIL language. I said in the previous post that this interpreter was written by another student in BASIC but I didn’t know who it was. Looking at one of the printouts from a simple CESIL script I wrote I can now reveal that the clever student was “S.C.R. Lewis” and it was written in MCMLXXIX (1979 to you and me). I wonder if he went on to have a career in IT?
As part of the programming we also learned some simple analysis techniques such as flowcharting and were encouraged to write out our scripts on coding sheets before committing them to the computer. Part of the rationale behind this was that there was just one RM 380Z between the whole class and so machine time was limited. Writing out the script beforehand reduced the amount of time you needed to spend on the machine. I don’t remember that being a particular problem but then again I knew nothing different.
Progressing to BASIC
After about a term of CESIL we moved on to BASIC but, of course, the same limitations were in place and so the flowcharting and the coding sheets remained. By this point I and probably others too had computers of our own at home meaning we could at least hone our BASIC skills in our own time. Initially I stared in awe and wonder at the neigbour Steve’s ZX80 and then procured a ZX81 for myself followed by a Sinclair Spectrum. Others will have had Acorn Atoms, Commodore 64s and, of course, the BBC Micro.
All of this was before the domination of the personal computer and the IBM PC so the world of computing we were taught was very different to what we know today. There was no cloud computing, virtual servers and IOT devices. Instead my notes talk of punched cards, paper tape, VDUs and teletypes.
My first ever interaction with a computer was via a Teletype at the tender age of 11 in 1976. My secondary school had a link to the Rutherford Appleton labs a few miles away in Harwell and they allowed us access and computing time. This must have been very unusual and it set me on a course towards a thirty plus year career in IT so I am grateful that someone put that Teletype there.
I have scanned a number of pages from my notes which you can see below and they give a lovely snapshot of a different era and show just how much computing in general and in schools has progressed in the last nearly 50 years.
