SemiOT: Mourning for Classic Computing

From: Douglas Quebbeman <dhquebbeman_at_theestopinalgroup.com>
Date: Tue Aug 14 06:26:03 2001

> On Mon, 13 Aug 2001, Douglas Quebbeman wrote:
> >
> > For me, it should be a date to *mourn*, not to celebrate.
>
> I have to disagree, Doug. The historic events you so despise are the very
> ones that have made my life *possible*. I grew up as a computer nerd in
> rural Oklahoma -- not exactly the point of deepest or quickest penetration

"When I was a young man, barely seventeen...
 went out to Hollywood to change my dream...
 Dusty Oklahoma was all I'd ever seen...
 ...and I was getting older..."

Yeah, Louisville ain't a techno hotbed, either...

Neither of us would have been any worse off if we'd never been
involved with computers. I was going to major in choral music
direction... took one required course in music theory and
Computer Programming 101... and never looked back, that is,
until recently...

> Also, not every programmer produced from personal computing is a bad
> programmer. I've seen quite a number of such people that should be
> forbidden from ever invoking a text editor, but we're not all
> that way.

Agreed; and some would say it's worth filtering every grain of
sand in the ocean just to get at the few grains of gold contained
therein...

> I may not have a lot of field experience (I'm not even out of college
> yet), but I'm a damn good programmer.

I'd say if you a damned good programmer, it's because you've developed
expertise, regardless of how you got it. But I know lots of stories
about PFYs getting their start in mainframe environments...

Regards,
-dq
Received on Tue Aug 14 2001 - 06:26:03 BST