1) In the Saturday morning programming class that I attended just to get the computer time, an experienced student had a card deck and a brand new student asked to see it, and the former unfortunately agreed. The new student had no idea that the order mattered and scattered them all over his desk.
2) I rode a Honda 90 over Beverly Glen to attend UCLA. One morning I had a 300 card PL/1 program bungied onto the back of the motorcycle. The car in front of me slammed on its brakes when the signal turned at Beverly Glen and Sunset, I rear-ended them, and my deck went flying all over the road.
[−]curiousObject · 2026-11-15 Sun 13:08 UTC ·
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Did the cards not have some sort of index system so they could be automatically sorted back into the correct order? Holes on the edge maybe?
[−]KineticLensman · 2026-11-15 Sun 14:35 UTC ·
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Another useful technique was to draw a line diagonally across the top of the deck with a marker pen or similar. Helped a bit as a first pass for any post-drop sorting
I think John Romero had a similar story in one of the books about pre-Id days. I suspect dropping a deck of cards was an experience almost everyone had!
1) In the Saturday morning programming class that I attended just to get the computer time, an experienced student had a card deck and a brand new student asked to see it, and the former unfortunately agreed. The new student had no idea that the order mattered and scattered them all over his desk.
2) I rode a Honda 90 over Beverly Glen to attend UCLA. One morning I had a 300 card PL/1 program bungied onto the back of the motorcycle. The car in front of me slammed on its brakes when the signal turned at Beverly Glen and Sunset, I rear-ended them, and my deck went flying all over the road.