Computing at the U of M
Someone at work was discussing how they kicked off a script to run last night, expecting that they'd come in this morning and have results. Unfortunately their script had an error, so it exited shortly after it started, and no tests were run. Made me think back to my Computer Science classes at The University of Michigan.

When you turned in a program, you did so by creating a script and submitting it to the main computer. It would run the script, (which usually did a listing, showed the data files, and then ran the program). The batch job would list the time at which the job was run. All programs had to be run before midnight of the due date. The TAs and Professors always stressed, "Make sure your job is run before midnight... and make sure the script works before you submit it! If it isn't run before midnight, you'll get a 0. No exceptions." People were almost always pressed for time, and submitting their jobs close to midnight. Some unfortunate person would end up submitting it right before midnight from the north lab. They'd then catch a bus to central campus, go to pick up their listing, and find out that their job died... and it was now after midnight. result - 0.

Because of this I pretty much always tested my jobs early, would insure they worked, and then might tune things right up to the last minute... but at least I knew when it went in, it would work. One time I did, and I got to the lab where the printer was, 5 minutes before midnight. Picked up my printout, and there was an error!!! There was one terminal from which I could submit in this lab... but after much pleading the user who was on it logged off, I fixed my script, resubmitted, and made the dead-line!

Also... our accounts were credited with a certain amount of funds at the beginning of the class. CPU usage, paper usage, etc. was charged against these funds. I remember one time calling a Professor at 10:00PM, asking for more money in my account because it was all gone and I didn't have enough left to print the job. I knew I was cutting it close... but when I picked up the printout, there it was... my listing, the data file, and then the beginning of the run... and all of a sudden something to the extent of "No more funds available, job exiting." :-( After that, I made sure I always had plenty of funds.