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My old man’s a programmer
Nothing galvanises the readers of Computing like a competition to be the oldest. This time, we are looking for the oldest second-generation programmers.
“I’m afraid I’m only 46,’ says Amanda Kent, now working in RPL/RMS at Carphone Warehouse.
She learned to touch type on a punch card machine aged 10, but she adds: ‘My father hit IBM autocoder at Monsanto in the mid-1960s. I started IT work in 1984, while he didn’t stop until 2002. Do we have the longest overlap?”
Incidentally, her punch card skills came in handy when she arrived at the Department of Health in 1987 and found “a lovely old ICL” that still used them. We are hoping it is not being used as part of the National programme.
“I went on my first computer course in 1965, accompanying my father,” says Mike Pugh at HSBC.
“He was an absolute whiz with RPN on HP programmable calculators.”
Mike’s dad, a geography professor, never decided to get into programming the big stuff, but his son had the chance to look around the inside of the university’s Atlas. Any more second-generation programmers?
My son-in-law is a programmer, does that count?
I started with Fortran in the late 60s. Ask again in about 15 years when my grandchildren have decided on careers, there may be a third generation
Posted by :yggdrasil | October 25, 2007 1:21 PM