Nothing fun about cards. I had my Fortran exercise in a backpack when I bicycled to to Finnish government computer centre. It was raining, so the cards turned little bit mushy and jammed the machine.<p>Sabotage and high treason, basically.
BTW: This is from 2012.<p>There's also a corresponding card reader to interpret these cards: <a href="https://www.masswerk.at/cardreader/" rel="nofollow">https://www.masswerk.at/cardreader/</a><p>This was a spin-off of a now long defunct custom Google search interface. Compare (while Google closed their public search API in 2016, there are a few cached search results available; users of a certain age may also try "list games"): <a href="https://www.masswerk.at/google60/" rel="nofollow">https://www.masswerk.at/google60/</a>
Here is a postscript file that generates punch card images: <a href="http://t3x.org/lfn/punchcard.eps" rel="nofollow">http://t3x.org/lfn/punchcard.eps</a><p>Context: <a href="http://t3x.org/lfn/index.html" rel="nofollow">http://t3x.org/lfn/index.html</a>
There's also a more advanced version that lets you experience the joys of punch-card programming with modern languages (JS, Perl, Python (mostly Python2)):<p><a href="https://www.masswerk.at/card-readpunch/" rel="nofollow">https://www.masswerk.at/card-readpunch/</a><p>(Demo-stacks are available for download on the landing page.)
If you are into punchcards, I wrote a multipart blog post about recovering and running some 40-years old code which was originally on punch tape.<p>See <a href="https://www.quaxio.com/kaleidoscope_part1/" rel="nofollow">https://www.quaxio.com/kaleidoscope_part1/</a>
Next up is a virtual punch card dropper where you play the equivalent of 52 card pickup but with more cards and they must be shuffled in-order. Fun for all ages.
What I remember most is the sound[1][2]. <i>chunk</i> <i>chunk</i> <i>chunk</i> <i>chunk</i><p>[1] typing after a restoration <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWLptl0cKSc&list=PL-_93BVApb59yIG2RELONEYOzJ3lMXsqV&index=12&t=1382s" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWLptl0cKSc&list=PL-_93BVApb...</a>
[2] normal fast typing <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YnnGbcM-H8c&t=28s" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YnnGbcM-H8c&t=28s</a>
It is possible to store three decimal digits as three groups of four bits, in every 12-row column.<p>You can insert and delete when duplicating cards, by pressing with your fingers on the source or target card while typing on the keyboard.