theappslab - Latest Comments in Requiem for the Computer Lab

Re: Requiem for the Computer Lab

Jake — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 10:26:02 -0000

I love it. Excellent point.

Re: Requiem for the Computer Lab

Jake — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 10:17:37 -0000

Aside from a CS lab, which still does have a place as a nerd sanctum (and a place for specialized software), all the other labs could be switched into co-working study spaces. Or other useful stuff.

From what I've heard, colleges are going to need the space, since the next generation is even bigger than the Baby Boom.

Re: Requiem for the Computer Lab

Jake — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 10:14:21 -0000

Ah yes, spoken like a true B&S man. I had forgotten your background in athletics. I do find it hard to believe you didn't spend any time in a lab.

We're not gonna protest. We're not gonna protest. Gutter is a tool.

Re: Requiem for the Computer Lab

Joonas — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 03:12:46 -0000

Remember debugging Scheme in a lab in my freshman year, and watching trains collide while trying to comprehend semaphores in parallel programming...

I think CS students still use labs at least to some extent, as there are course environments and custom software to be used, and e.g. tunneling X windows over the network is still not as robust as using a local *nix box (or has there been some radical improvements in this area?).

Then again, laptop usage *has* definitely increased so maybe labs will gradually fade away?

Re: Requiem for the Computer Lab

chet — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 22:35:06 -0000

Nerds!

All you are nerds I say.

What was a computer lab? Oh wait, that's where the smart people went. I didn't visit...until my second go at college.

Better yet, a PCU discussion.

I used to watch that every time it came on Comedy Central in the late nineties (I think). Piven was hilarious. Gutter (Favreau)?

Old Woman: Excuse me, but can you blow me where the pampers is?
Gutter: What?
Old Woman: Can you blow me where the pampers is?
Gutter: What?
Old Woman: Can you *show* me where the *campus* is?

I've head days like that (wait, I still do).

http://www.imdb.com/title/t...

At first viewing I most related to Gutter. As I matured, Droz was the man.

Re: Requiem for the Computer Lab

John E. Bredehoft (Empoprises) — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 19:48:25 -0000

Things have come full circle. Punch cards were limited to 80 characters. Now microblogging is limited to 140 characters. Short is good.

Re: Requiem for the Computer Lab

Jake — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 11:33:46 -0000

You can't be blamed for poor workspace design. Were those extra hours billable :)

Sounds a bit depressing. I worked in a metal-sided construction office for months in urban Detroit. Consultants get some crappy workspaces.

Re: Requiem for the Computer Lab

Jake — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 11:31:15 -0000

We're the same vintage. Some friends and I found an character mode chat room world freshman year. We then proceeded to get booted over and over just for fun. We were the ex-Presidents.

It was freaky odd when Mosaic/Netscape exposed a whole world of other people out there on the information superhighway.

I've been waiting to drop that for weeks :)

Re: Requiem for the Computer Lab

Jake — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 11:28:34 -0000

It's funny how fast technology moves. My freshman year, a couple people had those clunky word processors. By senior year, they had traded them in for desktops. A couple years after that, most freshmen were arriving with computers.

Punch cards sound fun. I think someone should recreate that experience at a geek museum. I'd pay for that.

Re: Requiem for the Computer Lab

Jake — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 11:24:49 -0000

Assembler tweaking was too advanced for me. I wrote games instead, but yeah, it did seem like a big deal. Not so much anymore I think.

Re: Requiem for the Computer Lab

Jake — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 11:22:50 -0000

I always wanted to try doggie biscuits in the luggage.

Re: Requiem for the Computer Lab

Jake — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 11:22:37 -0000

Nice. I don't recall anything that big iron. We had boatloads of Macs, everywhere you went. I did some support on Win 3.11 in my senior year and remember wondering who used these things.

Re: Requiem for the Computer Lab

Jake — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 11:20:33 -0000

I assume you mean now vs. back in the day. Does anyone use lab computers anymore?

Re: Requiem for the Computer Lab

Jake — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 11:17:33 -0000

We used to eat out on the patio right outside the lab in question. It was very close to a food court area and a parking lot, which made it more desirable for late night hacking (and junk food consumption). The other labs were too far inside the campus.

Re: Requiem for the Computer Lab

Matt Rasmussen — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 10:05:13 -0000

I remember thinking how cool my resume would be if I could get a work-study job in a lab. What perspective...

Speaking of tripping over a cord and unplugging computers, I was a consultant at a place that stuck 10 of us in a small conference room with rows of folding tables as desks. We had to shimmy between chairs and tables to get to our workstation and you guessed it, I tripped on one guy's power strip, it came unplugged, he lost everything he had worked on for a couple of hours. Still feel bad about that incident.

Re: Requiem for the Computer Lab

flopflips — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 08:49:43 -0000

He he. I remember having to do a C programming assignment, and sitting in the computer lab, feeling completely thick and stupid. Or doing SQL in the same lab, and feeling the same, and feeling the same when doing JavaScript. Hey, I spot a theme here.

I remember in 1994, finding that you could use "newsgroups" on the PCs, using Nestcape, or something like that, and being very excited to find lots of people talking about the Beastie Boys and Doom2 cheats. What a cultured person I am. There were labs everywhere, when I was at Uni from 1992 - 1995, and again in 2000. Not sure what it'd be like now.

Re: Requiem for the Computer Lab

John Flack — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 08:47:16 -0000

I was at UVA in the early 70's. The computer lab (only one for the College of Arts and Sciences, probably one or two more in the School of Engineering) was filled with keypunch machines, and you would hand a pack of punch cards through a window to be run. Results in one or two hours - guaranteed, except at the end of the semester. Only people taking a programming class ever went there. Papers were written on a portable typewriter.

Re: Requiem for the Computer Lab

Lawrence Woodman — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 04:29:47 -0000

The thing I remember particularly fondly is coming in after coding all night and showing each other new tricks you had managed. This was especially true when tweaking assembler.

Re: Requiem for the Computer Lab

Medela — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 04:13:59 -0000

So is that the only thing you use the computer, it's quite surprising!

Re: Requiem for the Computer Lab

Dan Norris — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 21:28:46 -0000

I distinctly remember downloading slackware linux onto something like 15 3.5" floppies using a 28.8kbps modem over the course of a day or two (partly due to dropped connections). Before starting the download, I had to make room for the downloads on my hard drive (it might have been 200Mb or so...maybe less).

I also remember using "talk" and "ntalk" to chat with friends online.

Ahh...the good ol' days. Sad that my kids don't know what cassette tapes or VHS tapes are, let alone a world before computers when having an Apple IIgs with 1Mb of RAM meant you were *rich*.

And good tip on PCU--I loved that movie. I think that was the first one I remember with Jeremy Piven and I was a fan from then on.

Re: Requiem for the Computer Lab

joel garry — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 20:30:10 -0000

I was thinking of replying to the /. article that the various computer majors ought to have to build their own computer, learn an assembler. Even though I haven't done any stuff like that for 25+ years (besides part-swapping), it has always helped me, especially trying to understand the more modern piles of... paradigms.

Someone over there also pointed out there are still lots of things bigger than a PC us geeks need to play with.

Re: Requiem for the Computer Lab

John E. Bredehoft (Empoprises) — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 20:20:35 -0000

I have a couple of floppies sitting around that I need to throw away, but I haven't done so yet. (And yes, they're 3.5" floppies, not 5.25" or 8.5" floppies...)

Re: Requiem for the Computer Lab

davidhaimes — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 19:35:22 -0000

I still spent many hours in computer labs, we had a lab full of Sun workstations, an Oracle Lab and a networking lab, which back then could not be replaced by a PC.

I built my own PC for my final year (1996) and a lot of my computer science classmates got a PC about that time. I remember one or two laptops, but we all thought they were just being flash.

Re: Requiem for the Computer Lab

Rich — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 19:31:49 -0000

The only reason I would go to the computer lab is to use the printer.

Re: Requiem for the Computer Lab

jpiwowar — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 19:08:53 -0000

Ah, memories. I found a box of old 3.5" floppies from university days while cleaning 2 weeks ago. Lacking both hardware to read them and confidence that the bits were intact anyway, I converted them to toddler toys. The labels sure took me back.

I went to school at that awkward time where lots of people needed to use computers for their work, but not many had personal machines. Mid-term and finals weeks got pretty rough in the labs; classmates would email around when they found a lab that was miraculously uncrowded...what a game-changer an IM client or Twitter would've been for those situations.

My wife is getting her PhD at my undergrad alma mater, so I get to tour through the ol' stomping grounds every now and then. One of the labs I frequented as a freshman has been bulldozed for a greenspace/parking lot combo, but many of the others are still humming along, complete with that only-in-the-lab muffled clackety-clack keyboard sound and the unique olfactory signature of the "unwashed masses."

And hey, waitaminnit: Mountain Dew and Jack in the Box? You didn't have a no food-n-drink policy in your labs? Our lab manager overlords could get pretty huffy about that stuff.