No. Reel-to-real tapes were used for program and data storage, not memory, which is used for program execution, file caching, OS, etc.. Disk storage was also widely available in that time frame on everything from a Cray-1 to a DEC PDP-11 to an IBM S/360 etc. BASIC is a toy language. You would have been better off taking Pascal where you would have at least had a chance to learn such basic concepts such as data structures and recursion.
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Originally Posted by OrangeBlossomBaby
I was programming on a dummy terminal connected to a teletype machine with tickertape, and three huge "refrigerator-case" computers in another room that had reel-to-reel tapes for memory. That was in 1978, in high school. I was disqualified from taking algebra II because I got a D in algebra I. My choices for senior math class were re-taking algebra I and then summer school for algebra II, or computer programming. My options were BASIC, COBOL, FORTRAN, or PASCAL. I took BASIC.
There was no Windows, no DOS, no PCs. Just clickety-click with black screen, amber text, we mapped out our programs on paper with plastic templates before entering them into the computer, the insane but always entertaining divide by zero error, and the equally entertaining "goto" function.
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