48k? Tape cassette? Radio Shack? Hell, I cut my computer teeth on an IBM 360/20 card machine. That was with a grand total of 8k of magnetic core memory with 80 column punch cards for input and storage. Programmed it in BAL and RPG. Had to write tight code. Graduated a couple years later to IBM System/3 with 96 column card input and two (1 fixed, 1 removable) 2.5mb disk cartridges.
I did FORTRAN and COBOL on punch cards. Actually ended up learning Machine Language for a project in the Air Force. Likeyou, very tight code. No waste.
We now look at terabytes of hard drives for a couple of hundred dollars. The 10Meg IBM at my university cost millions and took up an entire room.
Putting target coordinates and the flight program into my old Titan II ICBM guidance computer was amazing too. Now that I look back at that it amazes me how we could put the bomb on target with such primitive systems. I still have the wiring and other diagrams for that system and see how efficient we were at coding those things. Now days the programmers throw around a few megs here and there like it is nothing.
Had to write tight code.
Oh boy, remember that. Multiply and divide commands cost a lost of memory so we would add or subtract the divisor and looped it until the remainder was less than the divisor, then count how many times we looped. In another instance, we got an invoice program to compile only by leaving out a period in an abbreviation.