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Subject: Re: gxs: Thanks and (off-topic) a.b.teeve
From: "gxs" <bikini@oll.boom>
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On 14-May-2017, Griff wrote:
> I don't want to go too long off topic but ...
>
> I started studying and experimenting with digital circuitry in 1967.
> Began programming computers in 1970, on a DEC PDP-8 and IBM 1401.
> Entered USAF as an enlisted computer programmer in 1975 and spent my
> entire career in the computer field, including going through the merger
> of the computer and communications fields, finally retiring as a Master
> Sergeant in 1996. Am now semi-retired, although I still sometimes
> accept consulting contract when the job is personally interesting and
> the customer is willing to pay me enough. Instead, I am continuing
> decades long research into n-valued logic and the problem of how to
> identify and reflect data element for which the appropriate value is
> unknown.
>
> I was partially responsible for what is probably the first ever written
> high school policy about playing games on school computers in 1972. (I
> wrote the game ... someone else triggered it with a very loud scream
> when the empire he'd spent an hour building up suffered a sudden famine
> ... and that scream brought the principal and nurse, as well as others
> running down the hall.)
>
> My first time in a chatroom was in late 1873 or 1974. (I can't recall
> exactly when I "discovered" Simtalk on MERITSS.) In the process of
> chatting, I made a date with a young lady located roughly 250 miles
> away.
>
> I can't begin to list all the things I accomplished in the Air Force.
> I did develop a reputation early in my career for comparatively
> bug-free software. (30 thousand lines of COBOL code -- analyzed,
> designed, and coded by me alone -- with exactly two bugs, one being a
> printout field one character out of alignment and the other
> self-identifying a potential miscalculation arising from an intractable
> real-world scenario.)
>
> I also had a reputation for bringing systems development projects in
> on-time (often ahead of schedule) and under budget. Likewise, I often
> accomplished thing that "experts" said were impossible. (It didn't
> matter if it was technical or bureaucratic, when told something was
> impossible, my response was invariably, "Watch me.")
>
> Throughout my military career, I was heavily involved in getting
> homogeneous and heterogeneous computers to "talk" to each other,
> starting with 4800 baud modems and on to token-ring, CSMA, and PTP
> protocols via RG-59 coax, twisted pair, and fiberoptic cable. (In the
> early 80s, I had to work out how to transmit files across half a
> hemisphere using a 4800 baud modem and an undedicated telephone "line"
> that was bounced off a satellite.)
>
> The programming languages I mastered included BASIC (the original, in
> addition to Bill Gates version), Fortran IV, COBOL, and Ada ... as well
> as number of assembly "languages", operating system commands (direct
> and executable files), and special purpose languages like Java, PHP,
> SQL, Perl, HTML, and so forth. (I actually reached the point where I
> designed systems independent of any language and implemented the
> designs in whichever language was available, mandated, or best suited
> to the design goals ... sometimes mixing languages depending on what
> suited various parts of the system design.)
>
> Enough! I think you get the idea.
>
> I will say it was evident from what the person said, and how they said
> it, that they had a little bit of success in a very limited part of the
> industry and felt they knew ALL about everything. I never really had
> that attitude and quickly lost the what little I did have when I kept
> running nose first (HARD) into things I didn't know or hadn't learned
> yet.
>
> People like that exist in every field of endeavor ... it a form of
> bigotry and it's best treat is as such ... shrug your shoulders and try
> to ignore them.
Mate, that's quite the life indeed!
g.
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