I started my programming career using those same punch cards. I was lucky, my dad worked in an office adjacent to the school, and they had 3 of them that were idle most of the time, versus having to stay up til all hours waiting to get to the ones in the computer center on campus. Fortran 101 class, the final project was programming Conway's game of Life. Very very slow: enter code on the cards, drop off deck at the input window, wait wait wait get your printout (good ol' 15x11 fanfold continuous printouts) at the output window, find bug, rinse and repeat.