How to start programming with Punched Card

I explored this a bit last year in a project for converting small snippets of RPG, COBOL, and FORTRAN to a punch card like format in https://github.com/barrettotte/punchit

https://www.masswerk.at/keypunch/ is a good tool for getting the basics of the punch card encoding scheme.

There's also a handful of people over at Hackaday that have made hardware for reading punch cards. Example: https://hackaday.com/2015/01/17/arduino-reads-punch-cards/

Have at it: http://x3270.bgp.nu/x026.html

Someone made an entire 3D IBM 1401 simulator. Punch cards. Flip switches. Scratch your head. Enjoy! https://rolffson.de/

Hello World example https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-COOnvYTuo

http://www.hercules-390.eu/

Oh sweet Turing's apple why?

Ha! In all seriousness, I'm curious (not judgmental). Academic? Just for fun? Lost a bet? A secret Santa gift?

I have been thinking about building such an environment. I'd also be curious if any exist.

Not sure, How you are going to proceed with this.

UNIVAC 1005 FTW