LOL in late 80s I was in mid 20s and living and working in 3rd country. Started at NCR doing COBOL and NEAT/3 assembler for OS support and a manufacturing system.
So I’m then terribly old. And I have lived a life driven by curiosity for everything. I’m no system engineer for sure but have self discovered a lot that sometimes proves useful and engineers and fellow product managers are like “ WTF how did you know that?!”
The good old school system engineers knew how and why the software worked from the metal to the terminal and how to use the whole system productively. I’m in awe of such people and they are a privilege to work with.
Oh and FTR started programming with punch cards when at high school. Used a local bank to compile Fortran.
I read this, and instinctively thought, "Wow - this person's old! This'll be a cool historical anecdote".
Then I remembered I was also 8 in the late 80s. (I had an old BBC B Microcomputer I programmed on badly.)